


Saving grace

by Zorika



Category: One Piece
Genre: A lot of battling mental illness with humor, Ace Lives, Ace was a mess, Ace was not okay, Ace whump, AcexOcs and other questionable decisions, Alternate Universe - Mob, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Drug Use, Family Feels, Found Family, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Marco is not okay, Marco whump, MarcoxOc but fear not MarcoAce is endgame, Meeting years later AU, Miscariage, Platonic Bedsharing, Self Harm, Slow Burn, That I wanted to read but couldn't find, Whitebeard Pirates as Mafia, and boy do I mean hurt, but don't worry for we have:, no beta we die like men, no love triangles, plays in past and present, veeery slow
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:34:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 31
Words: 78,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25208548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zorika/pseuds/Zorika
Summary: Ace left his family six years ago.And of course, he would choose this moment. Six years where he could have done this, but no: It had to be now. Now that Marco is staring at an abyss where normal life was yesterday. He had to choose this shattered version of reality for his reappearance:Ace is back.'Ace has to be realistic about this. Marco is a married man, and Ace is just the asshole who hurt and left him but still has this level of intimacy with him that words and time couldn't strip away.'
Relationships: Fushichou Marco | Phoenix Marco/Portgas D. Ace, Masked Deuce & Portgas D. Ace, Monkey D. Luffy & Portgas D. Ace
Comments: 176
Kudos: 161





	1. Is that your hand or is it mine?

**Author's Note:**

> This story dives deep into themes like pregnancy loss, mental illness, and what some people call 'shit life syndrome'. If you feel like any of that hits too close to home, please take care of yourself and don't read further.  
> And now as an additional warning for this first, and most likely all following chapters: Explicit language Portgas style.

Marco has imagined it happening in lots of ways.

He thought of himself - sitting on the sidewalk of a café, reading on his phone, when the waitress would ask him if he wanted a refill. He would look up. And there Ace would be. Behind the waitress, just walking down the street. Ace has always walked with confidence: Eyes up, a clear goal in sight. His passion bleeds into his motions.

Marco imagined it happening on streets. When he would stay at a crossing and someone on the other side - blurry, behind cars, and mist, and distance would look just a tiny bit like Ace.

Marco imagined it happening when he got home. Ace sitting on the stairs, cigarette in hand, his easy smile shifting from the sky to him.

And sometimes...sometimes he imagined it happening at work. He would get called in. Someone would say, "Mr. Newgate, we have an emergency and we need you!" So Marco rushes in. And Ace would be lying on his table, irregular heartbeat, bleeding out, _trying to die_ right in front of him. Sometimes Marco can't stop this particular fantasy and Ace does manage to die right then and there.

In these fantasies, it is always him who spots Ace first.

He didn't look out for him today. He has been trying to not see.

In these fantasies, it is always him who spots Ace first. He gets time to collect himself.

Marco has desperately tried to not see anything today, but his eyes are glued to the headstone.

In these fantasies, it is always him who spots Ace first. He gets time to collect himself. And most of the time - he just lets him walk past. He doesn't cross the street. He leaves before Ace wakes up in the hospital. He has the power to connect their paths again. And he makes damn sure, that they do not.

Marco is staring at the headstone, not wanting to see. Jet reading and rereading the engraving.

When a hand lands on his shoulder. Just a hand - in the end, that’s all it takes. A simple touch. Not more or less personal than someone just passing Marco by. He still knows that this hand on his shoulder is gonna turn out to be Ace’s. But then he had known that very thing often over the last years, hadn’t he?

He knew it would be Ace.

Marco knew it would be Ace, when he looked up in the cafe, when he stood at that crossing, when he got into his operation theater.

It never was.

But here he is, because of cause Ace would pick today of all days to align their roads again. "Ace," he says before he has even turned around to him.

Marco used to imagine the shock it would be for him to see these freckles again. Just imagining him used to make his stomach clench. But it is just fact now: Marco turns and Ace is right there.

Ace is here, his skin is still the warmest color Marco has ever laid eyes on, he hasn't grown out of the freckles, jet. His eyes are dark and his eyebrows still. Ace's eyebrows not moving used to be a sign of intensity. Of something not being right. Ace's emotions flicker over his face so much and so fast, his eyebrows sometimes seem to dance a dance that Ace can't control.

But he hasn't seen Ace, nor his eyebrows, in six years. He doesn't know what the man in front of him is like.

"Did you pick the name?" Ace asks so quietly Marco would question if he heard right, if that wouldn't have been such an Ace thing to say.

He turns his eyes back to the headstone. He breathes in. Out. Swallows. He nods.

"It's a nice name,” Ace says, his warm hand leaving Marco’s shoulder, as he steps forward, bends down to put some red hibiscus flowers next to the roses that Marco brought.

They don’t speak. Marco is back to staring at the headstone and so is Ace.

Marco should react in some way. He should maybe scream at Ace. For not coming back earlier, for leaving.

For coming back at all.

Ace has always hated Marco's passiveness. But he also enjoyed leading. Marco waits for Ace to do it now. To take Marco's hand again, to lead him to their next crazy story to tell. Away from here.

Ace doesn't. He is still crouching in front of the grave, the end of his coat hanging on the ground. Ace never used to wear more than a sweater.

"I've wanted to come home for a while now - to check on Luffy and you guys. I guess I was waiting for a good time, but...it didn't come."

Marco doesn't believe for a second that he was originally gonna be included in the checking of 'the guys.’ Too much happened between them to be acquaintances, that sometimes meet for coffee, or write each other Christmas cards. They couldn’t be at each other’s weddings, Thanksgiving dinners, or birthdays.

Apparently what they can do though is sweep back in, in the aftermath of disaster.

Ace finally looks up. His eyes are dry, but Ace can hold back tears for a long time. He is the type of guy who will scream back at you in confidence, then excuse himself to go to the toilet and have a good cry that no one will know about later.

Ace gives him one of his warm smiles. They used to be reserved for Luffy.

"On the way here I thought a lot about the day we met. Do you remember?"

There is too much light in Ace's eyes and Marco gets lost for a moment. He thinks about the first time he looked into them and huffs out a laugh.

"Your body was too small for all the rage it contained."

Ace grins back. "My body could have had Pop’s measurements and it wouldn't have fit."

Marco is standing on the dead body of his stillborn daughter and he is bantering with Ace. Maybe his insanity is at a point where he is imagining Ace. Actually imagining him.

The day he met Ace. He looks impossibly young in his memory. This sixteen-year-old, gangly teenager holding his brother in his arms. His head held high up, eyes taxing and aloof. It was winter, back then, and while Luffy was bundled up, hat, jacket, glove, and warm shoes, Ace was only wearing sneakers that looked like they had to be a family heirloom and a sweater. Luffy was peeking out under Ace’s arm, grinning at Marco with honest interest, but Ace didn't even spare him one second.

They met in Pop’s office.

"Look who's made it!" Thach called out from across the room, sitting on Pop's desk in front of the two kids, as Marco entered.

"Izou called," Marco said with a frown at Thatch. "He said you got yourself two problems. I thought you had a reawakening of the exotic-pets-phase, but..."

"Yeah, I don't think these classify as pets."

"This is somehow more alarming, than the raccoons."

At this Luffy broke free of Ace’s arms. "You have raccoons? Can I see?"

Thatch laughed. "Maybe later."

Marco walked through the room to sit on the desk as well - and got his first-ever close look at Ace’s face.

Freckles. A juxtaposition. An echo of childhood, that was already long lost and forgotten in all other features of his appearance.

"I think I excelled as a raccoon dad. It was time for an upgrade," Thatch said good-naturedly. "So now I adopt brats."

And this was the first time that Marco made contact with Ace’s way to use the English language.

"Shut the fuck up, old geezer! Don't talk to me like that when Elvis Presley would look for a way to kill himself so desperately, after looking at you, he would throw himself into the garbage disposal if he had to! Just to escape the way you wear his hairstyle, you sorry excuse of an impressionist who can't even impress grandmas with Alzheimer enough to get the burned sausage you call a dick wet!"

There was a moment of silence.

Marco looked at Thatch and murmured, "I think that qualifies as a Beli for the swear-jar."

Thatch stared back half impressed, half dumbfounded. "I think that was worth at least ten."

"Apart from that, what else happened today? If I read between the lines, I get the feeling that I missed something here," Marco said calmly, trying to defuse and understand the situation.

Thatch grinned. "These are Ace and Luffy. Say 'Hi', Ace and Luffy!"

"Hi,” said Luffy, smiling impossibly wide. Ace’s answer was one lifting eyebrow, and very very narrowed eyes. Marco smiled.

"And this is my brother Marco."

"Me and Ace are brothers, too," Luffy beamed and came a step closer to them. "Which one of you wins more fights? Elvis or Pineapplehead?"

"If you count that in exotic wildlife you will find here then definitely Thatch. But if you want to count that in good decisions then it's me."

"Don't listen to Marco, Luffy. He thinks a raccoon doesn't count as a good decision so he clearly doesn't know shit," Thatch laughed, bending downwards in Luffy's direction.

Ace dragged him back. "Touch my brother and I'm gonna make it very clear to you, that that also doesn't count as a good decision."

Over Ace snarling at the very nonplussed Thatch, Marco said, "I still don't know what is going on here."

"I'm gonna explain when Pops is- here. There he is."

The door had opened and Edward Newgate was looking down at all four of them. At Marco, arms crossed in front of him, at Thatch, who was still bent forwards to Luffy, lowkey suffocating in Ace’s grip.

Edward Newgate was a man so big his aura could fill ballrooms. It never failed to impress Marco how a tiny room made one feel when Pops entered it. Ace certainly did look impressed.

But for the first time ever Marco witnessed someone not drowning in the shadow that Pops cast into the room: Luffy used his brother’s second of perplexion to free himself of his grip. With a confident grin, he strode towards Pops. If he would stretch up he could have maybe reached Pop’s hip bone.

"Hi, I'm Luffy. And we are here to become Mafia-members."

* * *

"Marco?"

Marco blinks the memories away and looks at this version of Ace. Ace has grown up nicely. He was always confident in himself, but now the body matches his energy. He is beautiful and Marco is ashamed of himself for just growing older.

"Hm?"

"I asked if you want me to bring you home, or if you want to get away from all of this for a while. We can just cruise around if you want to."

"Ace," he croaks. "Ace, what the fuck are you doing here? Is it- is it done?"

Ace looks down. Tries to hide his resignation. “No. It's not done. But it's coming to a close and I am not sure anymore who is safe and who isn't."

He stops, but Marco doesn't speak. Just looks at him. So Ace continues. "Luffy told me what happened. And I asked myself: Would it be better and safer for you if I stayed away, or if I would be here..."

Marco thinks of angry eyes, of words that shattered them. Of tattoos and the destruction.

He says, "stay the fuck away from me, Ace."


	2. Ace

Ace leaves white hibiscus flowers at the grave. He doesn't know their meaning in flower language, but he knows what they mean to him and, in the end, a grave is about the living anyways - not the deceased. So fuck it.

Marco would probably know.

Marco has this thing where he gets envious over every piece of knowledge that he didn't realize he doesn't possess. And then sometimes Ace used to wake up to Marco reading about flower language at four am.

He refuses to miss Marco. Over the years he has gotten good at it.

He stands up.

There is mud on his trousers that is already hardening and cracking, and it makes him think of the ground in Caracas.

Caracas was one of the first places he went to when he left home. Walking familiar paths as a grown-up had been eye-opening. The crimes, the abductions, the syndicate, and cartels - how the fuck had Luffy and he survived there for two whole years when they were children?

Looking back at it, it was an immense amount of luck that they themself did not see. Could not see, because they were very busy feeling out what this world was like and who they were in it.

Ace’s perspective of that had been changed drastically in his second time in Caracas. But wandering through the slums, over cracked sand and asphalt, breathing in the air of too many people living too close together, again, brought back the vision of a younger version of himself and Luffy. Sitting in the shade, or playing basketball with the other kids of the community. Doing little jobs for the community to actually not starve. Hunting in the woods. The smell of sulfur and stone walls.

He met some familiar, friendly faces there. And for a while leaving hadn't felt too bad.

But missing Marco had sniffed out his tracks and caught up to him fast.

So the first purpose he tackled after leaving was not missing Marco. Ace has ways to make himself forget for a while. But it turned out that wasn't the same at all.

Marco stayed at the back of his head, like a parasite eating his way through his brain in a never-ending search for a way to make Ace falter. To reflect.

So Ace did what he does best with emotions he doesn't want to have: He turned them into rage. He never forgot it wasn't justified: It was him who had destroyed Marco, him who deserved the hate, the turmoil, the rage.

And at first, that was better than missing him. But it didn't take long until he thought about even Marco's worst habits with fondness and longing. The way Marco couldn't hold a phone or look at something on Ace's phone without taking it out of his hand. The not talking unless you coxed it out of him. The goddamn way Marco's face would stay the same and wouldn't show any emotion even in situations where Ace himself was fuming.

After a year, he made peace with Marco's passiveness in his mind, and that was when Ace knew that leaving Marco would never happen. Not in his head, at least.

* * *

His phone rings and the vibration shakes him right out of his memories.

He only has his home-phone on him. There are just five people who have the number, so Ace is fairly certain that it's Luffy. It's not.

It is Smoker.

"Hey,” Ace says into the phone, throwing one last look at the grave before he turns around to the path that will lead him out of the cemetery.

"Something came up."

It's exhausting to talk to Smoker. Always has been. He is so full of himself, he could clone himself by vomiting. He loves to hear his own professionality, and he thinks he achieves that best when everyone has to ask him pointless questions so that he can act smarter than he actually is. Not playing into his habits used to be fun, but now it just works his patience.

So he simply says his expected line. "Something came up? What do you mean?"

"Better talk in person. Come to mine tonight."

He heard that sentence a lot from Smoker in the past. It had different meanings then.

Their friendship used to be this weird thing that neither liked to acknowledge. They both had enjoyed each other's company for different reasons. Smoker had met Ace's passion for self-sabotage with a level of indifference that Ace was missing from before people had started to care about him. From Caracas. Foosha.

Smoker had enjoyed clashing with Ace. He had this aura that made people give in too fast. No one fights Smoker, and if they do it, then they do it once. Ace was the exception to this: They fought over who would win the football league (not that Ace cared), where to get takeout (not that Smoker cared), celebrity gossip (that they both didn't care for, nor knew anything about), and Smoker's love affairs (that Ace was more invested in than Smoker himself).

Smoker only interfered once in Ace's 'depressed quest', as Atmo's had called it. Ace had felt betrayed, then. Now he is thankful. So thankful he will comply with Smoker and not just march over to his house right this instance.

"Gonna be there. See you later," he says into the phone and hangs up.

He has a few more hours and a lot of visits to make.


	3. The safety of a home

Marco left Ace at the graveyard. He somehow managed to turn his back to him and get the fuck out and into his car without storming back to punch Ace in his pretty, freckled, fuck-face.

He drives home without seeing the road. Just Ace, crouching in front of the grave.

He understands why Ace came back: He knew that Marco needed to be angry and distracted, and it worked. For a good two minutes it actually worked.

Marco needs good reasons to be mad. Otherwise, it isn't worth the hassle for him. He is bad at fighting and always has been. He likes harmony.

Ace changed that up too when he angrily stalked into Marco’s life.

Ace is confrontational. And Marco can't fight with anyone but Ace, who is so incredibly infuriating and unreasonable when the mood strikes, it just ticks all of Marco’s boxes.

These days he doesn't even need Ace around to be angry at him.

But seeing him really helped on that front.

Ace is opening up old wounds so that Marco doesn't have time to focus on the new ones. Understanding that partly destroys the effect it had.

Yes, he is mad at Ace and has been for six years, because he feels it is deserved, but he didn't forget.

That Ace is considered enough to do things like this. To make himself the focus of Marco’s anger. That the worst that could ever happen to Ace is losing people he loves. Maybe Marco stopped being loved by Ace, but at the very least, Ace understands what it would mean for him to lose.

His daughter.

It's hard to think the word. He bites onto his lips. Pain is a distraction. That Ace would understand, too. Or his past version would.

He tries to fight it, but it feels too good. To think back of Ace's ‘angry ball of rage phase’, when they had just met. When everything had been fine.

Ace, Luffy, Pops, Thatch, and Marco in Pop’s office, in the winter almost ten years ago. Luffy in his hat, and jacket, and warm shoes. And Ace in the anger that had been his fuel for years at that point.

Ace’s taxing eyes when he said, "You are Whitebeard!"

And Pops had laughed and said, "I am aware."

"I want to join the Whitebeard Mafia Family!" Ace announced proudly, his eyes not leaving Pop’s face.

Pop’s laugh burst off the walls, and Thatch joined in, doubling over on Pop’s desk. Marco, too, couldn't keep in a tiny smile.

"What is there to laugh about, Fruit-Face?" Ace snarled, and Pop’s laughed harder, his banana-shaped mustache trembling. "I can work harder than these two fugly 'the barber had a bad day at work' chicken-McNobodys!"

"The boy is hilarious, Thatch," Pops chuckled, then bent down towards Ace, who promptly dragged Luffy behind himself. He smiled warmly at the kids, and Ace stared up at him, frowning. Fists clenched.

"How old are you two, then?"

"I am twenty-two," Ace exclaimed, frown not wavering.

Pops chuckled again. "How about we try this one more time. How old are you?"

"I just told you! Do I have to speak louder, grandpa? Or are you just to dump to comprehend?! Did the banana spiders eat your brain, you decomposing a piece of cheese? I am twenty-two!"

Pops sighed, then turned to Luffy.

"Little one could-" Ace shoved Luffy completely behind himself and screamed, "do not drag my brother into this, or you will be so dead bacteria won't even want to touch you!"

Luffy giggled behind Ace's back, obviously unbothered with the situation. “I'm twelve, and Ace is sixteen."

They all straightened.

Twenty-two had been an obvious lie, but Marco would have believed eighteen.

Sixteen though...Sixteen and twelve?

"And you have nowhere else to go?" Thatch asked, all humor forgotten.

"Does it look like we want to be here because we think it's fun or some shit?!" Ace yelled, then breathed in deeply. "Look," he said into the silenced room. "I need a safe place for my brother. We've been told that you don't suck complete balls. And I know what I am doing, okay? We've grown up in a family. We know how shit works."

Ace swallowed, and Marco thought that there was maybe more on the line for these two than what their demeanor had given away before. If Ace knew 'how shit worked,' then he also knew that there was no way to leave the family after joining.

"I speak Portuguese and Spanish fluently. I have dealt heroin, weed, and cocaine before. A bit of experience when it comes to firearms - I come with many assets," he wiggled his eyebrows, "and I can be motherfucking charming."

"Yeah, I think we already got a taste of that," Marco said.

Pops got the flask he carried everywhere out of his coat. It wasn't rare for Pops to start drinking in the middle of a conversation, but it usually meant that he was getting into his sterner mode.

"I see how serious you are about this, son." Pops took a gulp from his flask, then grinned. Ace’s intense gaze stayed attached to him, as if Pops would disappear in a cloud of smoke if he'd dare to blink.

Pops was stalling a bit in Marco's opinion. As much as they didn’t like it, they had been given a set of rules, that they had decided to follow. For now.

No new members. That was part of the deal the Whitebeard Family had made with the cops. Sending these two away would get harder with every passing minute - they could maybe find them a place to stay, not on Moby Street, but with their support. Marco was starting to mentally go through child protection service lists and people that owed them favors that could help, but Pop’s, apparently, had other plans.

"What family did you two grow up in, then?" He asked.

"Dadan Family," said Luffy, grinning up at Pops proudly. "In the Amazonas. With Dadan, and Dogra, and Magra, and Pochi. I miss Pochi. Oh, and sometimes grandpa Garp."

"Garp, you say? Monkey D. Garp?" Pops grinned even wider. _That_ would change things.

"Ace, he knows Gramps!" Luffy's smile didn't falter and neither did Ace's frown.

"That bastard. That cunning, dead-people smelling, Slytherin bastard," he murmured, his eyebrows almost meeting in the sharp V they created on his forehead.

Pops laughed once more. "It was Garp who told you that we ‘don't suck complete balls’, right, son?"

"He told us that we could only get worse if we would come to you," Ace said through clamped teeth.

Pops and Thatch snorted laughter.

"So naturally, you came here as soon as you could," Marco said with a tiny smile.

Ace pondered over it, then stared up at Pops with a newfound fury. "Why? Why did he want us to meet you? Why did he send us to such an overcooked hyena-laugh half-corpse, with a fashion sense from the 14th Century?"

"Wait," Thatch jumped off the desk. "That means you have a home, though. Right? You can live with your grandpa."

"No, not to grandpa!" Luffy was practically wailing. "Grandpa is crazy!"

Marco noticed how Ace's gaze turned soft in an instant, as he wrapped his other arm around his brother protectively.

"I have another question." Marco hopped off the desk as well. "Why did Chief of Police Monkey D. Garp had his grandkids grow up with a Mafia family in Brazil?"

Ace sighed, "Luffy just told you. Dude is as stable as Spongebob in a car."

Thatch mused, “I think I am either too old or too young for that reference. Marco, did you get that? Then I would be too young, I'd prefer that."

"I did indeed get that."

"Sure you would. With that cosplaying as SpongeBob's real estate going on on your head," Ace said.

Marco’s eyebrows twitched. "I think you gonna get a house ban on my real estate."

* * *

That had been their first ever bantering. Touching each other’s frequencies. What would have happened if he would have done it?

If he would have banned Ace from his head?

Marco has been sitting in his car, staring at the driver’s wheel for a while now. He knows he has to enter their house eventually, but living in memories of better times sounds so jubilant, so much easier, than the presents that awaits him in this place he calls home.

He could spend the night at Pop’s place. Izou’s, Blamenco’s - anywhere on Moby Street. Or he could face his wife and what's left of their marriage.

Ilma and he stopped communicating with words, after coming home from the hospital, eight days ago. The baby would be nine days old now.

They both count. They both won't stop.

The illusions need to be as close to life as they can be. And there is nothing left to measure their daughter’s progression with but time.

Marco wonders if he will regret not holding her when he had the chance. Her tranquil, perfect little body had been presented to them after a nurse had cleaned her. It had felt macabre to Marco, this grotesque ‘meet the baby’ performance, so he had refused to hold her.

He had looked though. He couldn't stop himself.

Freckles. His beautiful child had freckles. He knows it's rare that infants have them, but under her closed eyes, over the bridge of her baby nose, they sat.

Perfectly innocent freckles on the empty face of all the dreams he was losing.

It felt like pain he felt before.


	4. Garp

Monkey D. Garp drinks his fourth coffee of the day with violence that only his family can bring out of him.

Garp’s grandchildren make him drink coffee violently quiet often.

He loves his two brats with a passion, but more often than not, the wish to put his hands around their throats and throttle them gets the better of him. It is a feeling he is familiar with since Dragon: The first one in their family who told him he would leave to become a criminal.

The first time he felt the wish for Ace was, when Ace, eight years old and convinced that the whole world hated him, told him the same.

Luffy had followed two years later, after meeting Shanks and deciding for him to be his idol.

He wanted to throttle them all, shake them till they stopped their own insanity.

With Dragon, that feeling had come with helplessness because he saw Dragon's reasons for extreme activism, and he couldn't find the arguments to stop him. What to tell a child that came home smelling like gasoline, while the radio blurted about a burned down slaughterhouse?

With Luffy, that feeling came with desperation for his last uncorrupted family member. Luffy was innocent, easy to manipulate, and a crybaby.

With Ace, it was a conflicting mix of wanting to suffocate the brat with his hands or with a hug. Ace had been wronged by the people he met, and it left him broken and lonely.

Ace had been six years old when he understood why he was growing up away from the society he saw on television, why he didn't have parents, and why Garp told him, again and again, to not give his family name out freely.

At eight, Ace had asked Garp if it was good, that he was alive. If he should have been born. Garp told him, "to find the answer to that you will have to live first." And Ace had turned to him, from where he had sat at the red cliff, his eyes stripped of all the light a child's eyes should hold, and said, "I'm gonna become a criminal, just like my father. I can't be anything better, not with his blood and his name. But I am gonna be better at it than him!"

And Garp didn't know anymore. How to stop this avalanche in Ace’s head. If his fists or his words could stop this storm.

What he finally did do, changed all their fates: He brought Luffy and Ace together, and they became a force to be reckoned with. And his reasons for headaches and violent coffees at godforsaken hours.

He finishes his coffee, puts his cup down with too much force, and rubs his hand over his face. Ace is back. Sprawling on his couch, as if he had never left.

They have seen each other, since Ace left six years ago, swapped information, and borrowed resources. But the chances are high that Ace is back for good - his mission might finally come to a close.

Ace has been in dangerous situations since - okay, let’s be real - since always, but usually Garp was only involved in the aftermath when he had to bail him out. Now he is very much aware of the danger that Ace is walking right into.

He knows - he can't just take over now. Ace has been on this path for six years, and he did damn good.

Ace started fighting fiercely for every little crump of independence he could claw off his caretakers since he learned how to walk, and he stopped being a child a while ago. He is a competent, independent, young man.

Damn it, Garp wants to throttle him, then put him in a cage for his own good, till this mess is resolved.

Ace has his feet on Garp's favorite throw pillow (at least he doesn't have his shoes on), and dropped his beer on the carpet twice already. If Garp would complain, Ace would tell him that he has become a grumpy old man to care about carpets and pillows, and he would be right, so Garp says instead, "I thought you had other places to be."

Ace regards him for a second as if to find out what Garp is getting at. He cards the part of his right hand that's left through his hair.

"I have hours till I'm supposed to meet Smoker. And Luffy is busy: something about Zoro, a hamster, and a nail gun - I didn't ask."

Garp snatches Ace’s legs up to throw them in the general direction of the coffee table and makes some space for him to sit.

"I meant Marco," he clarifies.

"Marco, surprisingly, wasn't too keen on spending much quality time with me."

Garp likes Marco. He was who saved Ace when Luffy and Garp couldn’t. A good head on his shoulders. Clear moral integrity and a calm attitude to level Ace’s hot hotheadedness.

"How did it go ?" he asks flatly.

"He basically told me that I am bastard and should get smothered in ketchup, then tie myself to a fence to wait for a cougar to free me of my existence that is about as needed as brain cancer in four-year-olds."

"And in his words?"

Ace lets out a sigh, his gaze wandering away from Garp to the beer-stained carpet. "I am to stay the fuck away from him."

They stay silent.

Garp’s eyes remain glued to the turned-off television, but his hand finds Ace’s thigh on the coffee table. He gives it a loving pat to soften the blow. "Tough luck for him, I guess. You know you can't keep him out of this. It's dangerous if he doesn't know." He grins lightly. "And I think a distraction might be just what Marco needs. He just doesn't know yet."

It's the wrong thing to say. Ace looks up to him, his eyes are dark, his eyebrows low. "I gave him a distraction the last time one of his family members died - and look where the fuck we ended up in. This is a mess as big as what Luffy leaves in the toilet after eating at Chipotle!"

Garp chuckles. Ace took to Dadan's lessons of 'I'ma make sure that these idiots don't sound like complete morons when they get released into the world to cast their mayhem' with gusto and top grades.

"If you can't talk to Marco, it's gonna be me. You'd prefer that?"

Ace looks as alarmed as Garp predicted.

"No, I got this."


	5. Ace is back

Ilma is drinking wine. The prescribed medicine she has to take probably has something to say about alcohol usage, but Ilma's bad decisions are only affecting her now. She doesn't have to stay healthy for another life anymore, so apparently, she might as well just not. She is drinking straight out of the bottle. Sitting on the floor in front of the door of the nursery that won't ever be one. They painted it together in a light beige color, only two months ago. Marco thinks that happiness can be very fucking fleeting, as he sits down next to Ilma on the floor, against the door. Was he happy when they painted it? Why can't he remember? Ilma acknowledges him silently, with the half-empty bottle. He takes it, chucks a big gulp, and leans his head against the door.

Their daughter’s name is painted on it in a pretty blue color. They had planned to put her handprints under it. Marco sees a grotesque vision of himself throwing grave earth at the door. He can't suppress a hollowed laugh, that echos in their silence. Maybe Ilma is thinking about throwing grave earth too, because she starts to chuckle as well. It's a sad sound, and she stops abruptly to tear the wine bottle out of Marco's hands.

The worst thing about this door is how they had intended to measure her growths with it. The lines that say how she is ‘two years old and this tall’ will never appear. It would have marked their perfect home, would have been the visible proof of a happy childhood that now won't ever be more than an illusion.

He remembers doing it for Luffy in Pop's house. Luffy had grinned every time they measured, which wasn't too rare, but it was a proud grin, and Ace had given them his soft for-Luffy-smile, and achieving that was a pretty good reason to be proud.

The first time they did it wasn't too long after Luffy and Ace had accepted Pop’s invitation to stay with them.

Ace had been fuming about stepping into Garp’s trap and when they told him, that they had kinda stopped being an actual Mafia family he thought he had found the reason for Garp’s action. And he wasn't happy.

"So, let me get this straight," Ace said, in the bedroom that Marco had shown Luffy and him to. (They refused to be separated, saying they were used to sleeping together.)

"You made a deal with the Cops to stop selling illegal shit and you all got one 'get out of jail free card?"

Ace wasn't looking at him, but down at a joint, he rolled with practiced hands.

"Our crimes in the past were forgiven, some of the members we had in jail got free. In return, we can't take on new members and have to still unofficially protect the parts of the ghetto of this city that the cops can't enter. If someone violates our laws in the city parts we protect it's our task to clear matters up."

"Meaning you bash some Thug's heads in." He looked up at Marco, from where he was using the end of one of his sweater stripes for tubing his joint. His brows twitched.

"Yes, kinda."

"So us being here is already against that deal, right?" Luffy asked and climbing up onto the bed to jump on it.

"We made that deal with your grandpa. If he sent you here, then that must mean that it is alright for you to stay. Also, it's not like we will make you part of the family."

Ace sneered, which wasn't too impressive, considering that Luffy was landing his jumps as close to Ace as he could to really shake him through.

"Grandpa and his whole fucking speeches about justice, and here he is making a deal with you. The old geezer’s spine has the structural integrity of properly sucked through gummy worm!"

Luffy, next to him, jumped up again and Ace used the opportunity to drag one of his legs under him out, to make him fall onto the bed with a loud plop.

"Bastard should choke on his own voodoo doll," he said over Luffy’s laughter, but Marco couldn’t miss the warm smile that Ace gave his little brother.

“So how long have you been here?" Marco asked.

"The US? Or here, in Sixis? Not too long. A month or two at most."

Marco nodded, contemplating, “then you spoke English before?"

"Grandpa and Dadan spoke it to us," Luffy said, and Ace rolled his eyes.

"It was really important to him that we learned how to speak 'proper Imperialism', but Portuguese is our first language."

Marco smiled at him. "Fluent in McDonald’s?" he teased.

"With a thick school shooting accent," Ace grinned back, eyebrows waggling.

"And I guess you were already good in corrupt politics."

"Nah, I thought capitalism induced poverty sounded cooler."

"But you didn't dabble in freedom?"

Ace’s smile went out like a dying lightbulb. "No,” he said, stood up to put Luffy under the covers, and lit up his joint at the window.

"I was to bad at it."

* * *

Ilma tries to put her head on his shoulders. A silent plea for support that he can't give her. Not when he feels so far away from everything. It's like he is a reflection of himself, far away down a line of infinitely mirrored Marco’s.

He jerks away from Ilma, and in the same second, the doorbell rings so he can camouflage his sudden jumping up as just him leaving for the front door.

Ilma stays where she is. Head against the door, wine bottle in hand. Her eyes are empty pearls, framed by cast down tragically curved lashes.

Marco descends the stairs, already dreading the conversation he has to have with whoever feels it's their duty to tell him how sorry they are. If it's one of his siblings, he swears, he will just shut the door in their face.

If it's Ace, Marco won't even open the door.

He hates himself for expecting Ace, after seeing him only one time after so many years. He hates himself more for wanting it to be Ace, even if he would maybe just use that as an excuse to actually punch him in his pretty freckled fuck-face.

It's Luffy.

And he isn't looking at Marco with pity and suffering eyebrows full of understanding, but with the beginning of a Luffy grin.

It is a welcome sight. Mostly.

"Hey, Pineapplehead."

"Luffy, hey," Marco says, leaning against - and effectively blocking - the doorway. Luffy and Marco have an unvoiced rule to not bring Ace up in conversation, but Marco has the sneaking suspicion that it expired today. His brain sways between wanting to talk about Ace coming back with everyone who knows what that means, and 'please, everyone who ever knew Ace - stay the fuck away from me, until it's old news, that he's back.'

Ilma doesn't know about Ace. It is one thing that made him fall in love with her. Ima accepted him, with his tattoos and heart in the handwriting of another person, and never even questioned it.

"Do you want something specific? Or are you just coming by?" Luffy isn't just coming by, his visits always turn out to have a purpose, even if Luffy himself, more often than not, doesn't know it.

"A walk," Luffy says and smiles. "I want to go for a walk."

So they go for a walk. Behind the house, the woods start. They aren't impressive, and the sounds of the streets nearby can't be left behind, but it still feels calming to be there. Only people jogging by your problems, no one got the time to linger and stare.

He fondly remembers the first time he went to take Ace and Luffy out for some hiking in a close-by reserve. Sometimes, both Luffy and Ace, would start to feel trapped indoors. It had to feel caging, after growing up in a rain forest.

The closest Marco could come to giving them the rain forest was a tiny reserve, surrounded by highways and dense population, but it had been enough to completely alter Ace’s and Luffy's behavior, when inside it.

He notices it now too. How Luffy, as soon as he enters the woods, sets his steps with more care. How he becomes so much quieter in comparison to Marco, who feels like mouses four miles away, can hear him staggering over dead branches and fallen leaves.

Luffy is telling him something about a film he is making, with his best friend Zoro, that features a hamster in some way? Marco isn't really listening, more thinking about Ace’s smile as he breathed in nature in that reserve, on that day, all those years ago. The way nature freed him.

Finally, Luffy stops chattering, to give Marco a headstart: Luffy doesn't stop talking. Unless he is building up to something important. This is it then. Marco tries to wrestle a decent answer to the ‘how are you? how are you really?’ Question out of his mind, but nothing comes up.

But Luffy is Luffy, and Luffy never says the wrong thing in these kinds of situations.

Luffy doesn't ask ‘how are you feeling’. Luffy asks, "do you know what you are feeling?"

Marco looks at him and again feels like he is only one Marco, way down a long line of other reflected Marcos, and he wants to say ‘I don't know, I just work here.' He doesn't manage to.

He shrugs, shakes his head.

Luffy nods. "I spoke to Ace. He sounded the same," Luffy says flatly. His smile has vanished, his eyes are intense.

Marco feels anger rise up in himself and all the other Marcos, that are split apart by reflections but surely all feel the same at that. "Yeah? He came crying to his little brother? Told you all about how I didn't want to hear from him?"

Luffy shakes his head, no muscle moving in his face. "No. I asked, and he didn't tell me anything."

That is bad, they both know. Ace tells Luffy, what Luffy wants to know. Ace let Luffy make his own mistakes. 'You want to try to smoke? Alright, your choice. You want to learn how to shoot? Ok, but please only when I'm there to make sure it's okay. Luffy, you want to try to beat some thugs up? Also fine. As long as I can be backup, just in case.' Same with knowledge: 'You want to know about the birds and the bees? Here we fucking go. Why you grew up without a father? This is my wild guess. And sometimes I don't get out of bed, and the reason for that would make you sad, do you still want to know?'

And maybe, that parenting strategy would have horribly, horribly backfired with another kid, but Luffy, in the end, decided to never smoke again. Ever. That shooting is boring, beating up is only good, when you are winning, and, no, he did not want to know about the birds and the bees, and if Ace didn't want to tell him for his own good, then Luffy didn't need to know why Ace sometimes stayed in bed and didn't move for hours.

Ace is back.

Marco still hasn't had a 'holy fuck Ace is back' moment, and thinking about reacting to a very real Ace will probably feel weird for a while. If things work out fine, he won't have to react much to Ace, because Ace will continue being a distant memory in his life.

He sighs, then says, “I told him to stay away from me. I don't want to be dragged into this whole thing - I have a normal job and a normal life now, and I don't need your brother messing it up again."

"Ace left for you to have this."

"Ace left me when I begged him not to!" He spits out.

Getting angry at Luffy is a thing that should never happen. There should be a physical law to make it impossible. To Luffy, bringing happiness to the people he loves is his priority, and getting angry at Luffy only accomplishes to make one feel bad later.

"Sorry, Luffy." He sighs again. “It just...was a bad time to see him again. I can't deal with all of this at once."

"Ace thought that's why he should come back. Also, something happened. I guess you already saw it, but he wants to talk to all of us tomorrow. At Moby Street."

"I just said I don't want anything to do with this."

"It was always about you too. You can't ignore it. You and Ilma might not be safe anymore - that's what Ace said."

Marco swallows. He thought they all had outrun this. All but Ace.

Luffy's light smile is back. "As soon as we have time, I'm gonna make Ace take me to Sanji’s restaurant, and we are gonna eat all the food they have. You should come." He snickers, with his hand in front of his face, and there is a bandage covering the part between thumbs and first finger.

Marco carefully takes it in his, to inspect. "What did you do?" He asks, concerned.

Luffy shrugs. "Accidentally shot myself with a nail gun while filming. Just a graze shot."

And for a second, Marco feels himself slipping, but he can't stop it. Not now, when Ace and their old dynamic is so vivid in his mind again.

He says, "Ace is gonna kill you," like he said a thousand times before.


	6. A tiny beginning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm moving in with my best friend, at the moment. It's a tad stressful and updates might slow down for a bit.  
> Warnings for this chapter: Mentions of Self-medicating with illegal drugs. And also, I don't know how that escalated so quickly, but there is a necrophilia joke. Sometimes I slip and Marco's and Ace's dynamic turns more cursed comment-esque than I want, or anticipated, it to be.
> 
> Edit: It just dawned on me that, maybe, decorating picture frames with noodles is not a globally known phenomenon. If you have no idea what I am talking about, I'm sorry that this chapter didn't make any sense to you.

"Ace is gonna kill you," Marco said, looking at Luffy on the floor.

It was only one week after Thatch had shown up with Luffy and Ace, and they both were in the process of getting familiar with the Whitebeard family. To different degrees.

Ace flat out refused to accept money, food, clothing, or kind words that they offered him, saying that he could make money on his own, and that all he had asked for was a safe place for his brother, not for himself. He even tried to pay them rent.

Luffy, on the other hand, fastly became the heart of the family, with his excitement for everything they offered him. From food, to bad jokes, to raccoons. Luffy's enjoyment was so honest and energizing it started tiny battles between the Whitebeard siblings about who would get to have him next.

Marco was especially drawn to the two, maybe because he spent the most time with them since they had quartered them into the main house, where only Whitebeard himself and Marco, as his doctor, lived.

All houses on Moby Street belonged to them and were inhabited by most of the other Whitebeard siblings and their divisions. Since Haruta had moved in with her own division, in house Nr. 12, the main house had felt silent and too calm.

Now, Luffy's laughter filled the halls, and his tiny fingers left dirt on the walls. Marco was incredibly glad for it. But sometimes, having a pre-teen living in ex-mafia-kinda-still-mafia place led to situations like this: A big part of the floor a puddle of gold acrylic paint, a messily colored picture frame with glued on partly gold-covered herbs that suspiciously looked like Marihuana, and in the middle of it all Luffy coated in paint.

"Are you hearing? Ace will kill you."

"There are no noodles but spaghetti in this house," Luffy said with a miserable sigh.

"I feel your pain," Marco answered slowly. "But I fail to see how messing up the carpet is a good revenge plan for that remorseless food crime,” he said preoccupied with the paint dripping from the brush in Luffy's hand to the carpet. “Please explain.”

"There are no noodles, but spaghetti in this house. I asked Thatch," Luffy complained. "And uncooked spaghetti on a picture frame would just look silly, don't you understand, Marco?"

Marco did, in fact, not understand.

"Luffy. Why are you gluing weed to a picture frame that holds an image of three saké cups?"

"Because there are no noodles."

"Ah,” Marco said.

At that moment, Ace entered. He gave his brother a tiny nod, and Marco a frown. “What are you doing here in this room?” He asked Marco, wiped the hood off his head, and threw his heavy backpack into the corner under the window.

“No: What is your brother doing to the room?”

The mud under Ace’s heavy boots mixed in beautifully with the acrylic paint in the carpet, as Ace danced over the mess on the floor mindlessly, and hopped onto the bed. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t come in here when my brother is alone.”

“I hate being alone. And Marco is nice, he won’t try to hurt me,” Luffy said, form his place on the floor in front of the bed, where his head effectively blocked Ace’s sight from what Luffy was doing.

Ace’s gaze found Marco’s, across Luffy’s head. “Yeah, I’m sure he is,” he said, and it sounded decently warm for Luffy’s sake, but his eyes were hard.

“It’s your safe space; I wouldn’t enter without permission unless it’s a medical emergency,” Marco reassured him.

“Neither did Dracula, that doesn’t mean bitch bat was a nice guy.”

“I promise you I’m not after your brother’s or your blood,” Marco said with a tiny smile. “Unless I’m here as Dr.Acula.”

“Oh no, my worst fear came true - you do make doctor puns.”

Marco had outed himself as a doctor to Luffy and Ace to get their consent for a medical check-up. He hadn’t gotten one. Ace had told them that their grandpa had already made sure that they were healthy, vaccinated, and had good teeth. And that the next person who would try to do that to him again, would end up in need of a medical check-up in an x-ray machine.

“When you try to get a leg over, do you tell your partner to open their legs up with a 'let me through, I’m a doctor’? Or is that also entering without permission?” Ace asked with a nasty tone of voice.

Marco grinned at him. “I do,” he quipped. “But seldom does the bloodless, cold, aristocrat, who’s body I sucked empty, respond.”

Ace snorted with laugher.

“What are you two talking about?” Luffy asked and turned around to his brother.

“Necrophilia, I think. It’s-” he stopped himself.

With Luffy turning around to Ace, he had given a clear view of the disaster that used to be a nice carpet.

Ace’s gaze drifted. Drifted from Luffy, to his hand, to the brush in said hand, to a color drop from said brush, falling to the carpet next to - the picture frame.

"Luffy,” he said, and his voice had gotten dangerously low. "Luffy, did you tape my weed to a picture frame to color it in gold?"

The truth came out of Luffy in a stream of yelled words. “It’s a school thing! Everyone has a picture of whatever they love most in class, and I need to have my own, or I won’t be a real classmate! It’s important! And they all have their frames decorated with macaroni. But we only have spaghetti, so I had to use something else, I’m sorry!”

Marco smiled quietly. Ace, who had been about to get up from the bed to chase his little brother through the whole house in anger, no doubt, let himself fall back down, dumbfounded.

"So, on your first day of school, you get told to bring a photo of something you love, and tomorrow you want to show up with a printed picture of alcohol?" Ace asked.

"Don't forget that the alcohol is framed by weed," Marco added.

And then they were both howling with laughter, while Luffy looked confused from one to the other.

"I see," Ace choked out, between laughing fits, "this school thing is working out great!"

"Wait. You’re not mad?"

“Fuck, yes, I am. But not as mad as your teacher will be when their picturesque, little wall of smiling families and stuffed animals gets hit by this.”

Luffy shrugged. “Zoro and Kuina have pictures of knives, and Nami just framed a Beli.”

“That generation is savage,” Marco said impressed and joined into Ace’s laugher.

"Now, let's fix this,” Ace said in what looked like an attempt at centering himself. “We can probably cover the weed enough to look like generic plants."

"Let's just hope, that you can also hide the smell," Marco said.

Marco and Ace kneeled next to the golden puddle, grabbed some brushes, and started to paint golden layers.

Marco hadn't laughed this much since Haruta had lived with them.

"I can't wait for your teacher’s reaction, Luffy," Ace said, smirking at both of them. At that moment, he lost all resemblance to the boy in Pop's office that had acted like a caged animal.

"We should give your grandpa a tip. Imagining a drug bust, and a dog brings them this photo of saké. Why saké, by the way, Luffy?"

Luffy didn't get to answer, because Ace was yelling about the way Garp would handle that situation, in his imaginative ways. He toppled backward, laughing, brush still in hand.

When he had gathered himself, he asked, "besides of the wish for alcohol already being awoken - how was your first day of school, Luffy?" While putting a tiny dot of gold on Luffy's cheek with his brush. Ace hadn't been happy about Luffy's decision to start on school, but Luffy was dead set on wanting to go to meet other people his age.

Luffy grinned at him and shrieked, "Super amazing! I'm friends with Usopp and Nami, but I'm gonna make Zoro my best friend!"

"Oh yeah? Why Zoro?"

"He is nice. But he doesn't know it - kinda like you, Ace."

Marco smiled quietly at their interaction. He missed the time when his siblings had been this young.

"Oh yeah? Do you want a good feel of how nice I am? Just because it made me laugh doesn't mean I forgot about the weed thing. And that was the last that I brought."

"I'm sorry, Ace," Luffy said dutifully.

Ace attacked him again with his brush. "I have to find a dealer now. Hey, Mafia underboss, at my disposal, would you happen to, coincidentally, know someone?"

"Hmmmm... I guess," Marco said frowning. "But I think to clear my conscience, I'd like to say at least once that you are kinda young for weed."

"To clear your conscience further: It has a medical purpose."

"Yeah," Luffy chimed in. "Ace will drown in his cereal without it, right Ace?"

Marco looked at them puzzled. "Pot keeps you from drowning?"

“I have Narcolepsy," Ace explained. "I get sleep paralysis, night-terrors, yadda if I don't smoke some Indica weed before bed. With weed, I can sleep almost like everyone else, and don't walk through the world like an extra on the Walking Dead."

Marco pondered over that for a moment. Left the humor of the last minutes behind. "Do you need other meds? I can get them for you easily."

Ace gave Marco his first kind smile at that. The first one that hadn’t been sparked by humor.

"Nah, I'm good. Weed works pretty well, and I don't want to mess that up for me with other substances. But thanks."

It was the first thank you, that they, as the Whitebeard family, got from Ace.

They couldn't have known how Ace’s feeling of thankfulness would spiral and lead them to the ugly situation that would end with Marshall D. Teach.


	7. Fuck-Ups

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Quiet a lot. Mentions of Underage. Police brutality.  
> Canon typical violence and the mentions of some physical suffering.  
> I think that as long as you tag it correctly, every topic is fair game in writing. But what sometimes triggers me is when hard topics are discussed casually. So people will struggle in this story. With their decisions. With what people around them decide. The one difference is past Ace. He is so used to violence, he doesn't blink twice when being confronted with it. He just had some traumatic experiences, that I will touch on later, and he will only start to understand all the ways that those formed him later in the story. So this is a warning for Ace not acting or reacting in ways that deliver an appropriate response to brutality and his general circumstances.

Ace knocks on Smoker's front door, and it's like stepping into the past. He talked to Smoker while he was away, but it was sparsely and only in between.

The last period of time he spent here was a day after he decided to leave, when he had asked Smoker for the worst favor he ever had to ask of anyone. The phantom pains left from that night start up again, and he rings the doorbell before he can lose himself in the feeling.

Smoker opens the door, cigar in mouth and frowning. No changes here either: Smoker still looks like he is trying hard at becoming concept art for a Disney-villain.

"Brat," he greets Ace, and that is one of the things that used to get Ace's blood boiling to a point where he thought the only appropriate response would be to spit him in his self-righteous face (which he never did). Now he just accepts it with a slight grin.

"Smoookey. Care to let me in?"

Smoker steps aside, and Ace enters. The house has yellow wallpapers from all the smoke that is clinging to it. Ace used to think that aesthetically pleasing - now it makes him want to gag.

"Let's talk in the garden," he says.

"It's October," Smoker says with the authority of someone who doesn't have to use more words to express his point, and to get what he wants.

Well, that never worked on Ace, and he won't start with it now. Ace walks ahead through the living room, with its black leather sofas and sophisticated style, to the sliding door that leads outside.

The garden has a wildness to it that goes right under his skin to the part of him where he stores childhood memories of Foosha: Luffy trying to befriend crocodiles which ended with him almost being eaten alive. Pochi running around them, barking, when they came back from the forest. Dadan not looking at them when they left, to hide her tears.

He suddenly desperately wishes for her to be here: He feels competent next to her.

Good thing that Smoker acts confident no matter the situation. It was something that annoyed Ace but also drew him towards Smoker when he was younger, right when they met.

It hadn't been long after they moved in with the Whitebeard family, in the spring after Ace had turned sixteen. For the first time, since leaving Dadan, Luffy and he had felt safe. It was only then that Ace realized how many of the things that made him want to leave in the first place, he had packed in his bag and brought along.

He found the time to reflect on that and everything that happened after, in Caracas, and he decided that - no - thinking didn't bring him further at all, and he needed to forget. He had been shown how to forget in Caracas, and he craved it now.

The new start that he had wanted Sixxis to be felt tainted with that realization, and want. With him. The perception of who people thought Ace to be had changed, he knew that. He didn’t feel different though. Still just someone whose existence had been an ugly mistake. Someone with too much time to come to terms with that. Forgetting. There was no way of overcoming, not yet. Still not, maybe never. And that was the last thing he wanted to think about.

So he fell back into his old money-making scheme: Beating up and stealing to build up a treasure, and then he bought himself a laptop, to build up contacts in chat rooms with men he went to have sex with. Caracas really had taught him a lot.

If he thinks about that now, so far away, in terms of mental health and thought patterns, from the teenager that he was, he aches for that kid. That kid that hadn’t believed himself to be worth more. Today Ace can see how fucked up this had been from all people involved. But it made him forget and, at the time, that felt less traumatic than thinking. His chosen ways of escapism, his leverage against his fears, had always had a whiff of self-destruction. He had been feeding the beast to gain a moment of peace from it.

The night he met Smoker, he had found his hookup in one of the chat rooms. A forty-something cashier. They had briefly spoken on the phone, and he had given Ace his home address.

Ace rang the doorbell, tossed up his hair to hang into his eyes a bit more, and waited. The man that opened the door had dark hair and glasses, and the aura of someone rushed who deals with stress on a professional level. He looked Ace up and down, then said, "No."

"No?" Ace asked incredulously. He didn't get rejected. Ever.

"I told you I'm a cashier: I have to guess kids' ages all the time when they try to buy alcohol. You aren't eighteen. So no."

And he actually closed the door in Ace's face. Ace fumed while pressing the doorbell repeatedly. He would not go down without a fight. On principle. The man took his sweet time to open up again, and when he did, Ace fastly put his foot in.

"Wait," Ace said, angrily staring up at the man. "I can't go to the cops. If that's it. My grandpa works there, and I would be in more trouble than you If he would find out what I'm up to."

The man sneered. He had large gums that made his teeth look oddly small. Not at all up Ace's ally. But Dadan hadn't raised him a quitter.

"Jesus Christ, you are wasting my time, kid - you are young enough to have a grandfather! The most action I'm up to is maybe read you a children's book on how death is natural and grandma is in heaven now."

Okay, Ace definitely had enough.

"Well, I'm also not up for anything with a dude that looks like personified death from that children's story. Drawn by Picasso. In his depressed phase!"

And then they were both screaming. And digging it enormously.

"Grandma died too early to teach you some manners?! And your parents? What does Daddy think about his little boy sleeping around with strangers? Or maybe Daddy doesn't care?"

"Oh yeah, I'm sure you have many people who care. Forty, single, no kids, cashier! But who would love someone who is rocking this severe case of lowercase teeth and capital gums?!"

"And you?! Why do you look like someone took a nasty, wet dump on your face through a sieve!?"

Ace's jaw dropped. He had to take a moment to recover from that - but only Dadan could beat Ace in a shouting match.

"They are called freckles! A new one magically appears every time you miss a good opportunity to shut the fuck up!"

They glared at each other furiously.

"I'm gonna close this door now, so that I can't punch you," the man said, still grimacing.

"Fine!" Ace yelled.

"Fine!" The man yelled back, and Ace just got his foot out of the door as it slammed in his face again.

And on his way out of that denser-than-a-meteorite-motherfucker's front yard, Ace took down the there parked car's side mirror with a well-aimed kick, started a fire in the guy's trash can, then threw the mirror in.

And that was when he met Smoker. In his police car. On patrol.

A few minutes later, the fire was stopped, complaints were made, threats delivered, and Ace sat next to a cop, on the passenger's seat with crossed arms and a bad mood. He wouldn’t get to forget tonight. Instead, he might get to greet his grandfather in his office, at the police station, in a fucked up version of ‘take your grandson to work’ day.

At least the cop was as thrilled to have Ace next to him as Ace was about the cop. And he didn’t do his job by the books. The guy was alone on patrol, chain-smoking, and hadn’t put Ace into the backseat. Maybe Ace could talk himself out of this.

Or not, if the gruff face that turned towards him was a good indication. “A fire in a trash can?! Because he didn’t want to have sex with you? Your generation always manages to find ways to gets equally more entitled and stupid!”

“Oh yeah, it’s our generation’s fault. Not the guys’ that raised us,” Ace deadpanned and leaned his head against the window. The day was not going as planned.

“I never wanted to raise any brats, and I’m not gonna start today - this shit is too much paperwork.” He started the car. “Never do something like that again. Give me your home address, I’m gonna have a little talk with your parents, that will be it. But if I see you in this area again it’s not gonna end this well for you. Got me?”

“Sure, but for a nice chat with my parents, we're gonna have to pick up the Ouija board first, “Ace ridiculed. “Maybe we’ll find a spirit medium with a five-star rating on Craigslist. For the séance. Go left at the corner.”

Smoker glowered but followed Ace’s instructions. They drove off and Ace could have just let that be it. But then he’d be at Moby Street, without Luffy who was still in school, and nothing else to take his mind off of things. No distractions. Unless he could provoke it out of this guy.

“So you don’t want to raise any kids? What does your wife say to that?”

The cop remained silent.

“I bet she thought you’d change your mind. The way she thought being a cop wouldn’t change you.”

His mouth twitched around his cigar.

“But then it was too late to switch course, and she saw you slowly being filled up by bitterness and frustration, that you brought home to her, instead of romantic gestures.”

“Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.”

“Then I’m right? You are supposed to avoid the stereotypes, not follow them like instructions. Did you hit here? Did she leave you, or is she too afraid to do that?”

Ace saw the muscles in his arms tighten. His grey eyes, like his smoke, seethed with anger.

“One more word and I’m gonna hit _you_.”

Ace had him.

“You became more and more unavailable emotionally. And now you have this abusive relationship with everyone else, and yourself on top. The only escape is the rare moments where you feel important, as you act as justice, in the job that took it all from you. The saving grace that condemned you earlier. A sad cycle with no escape that will lead to feeling more stuck, more frustration and more aggressi-”

Ace couldn’t finish because his head made hard contact with the car’s door, as the cop’s fist bashed into it. He hit the brakes, got the car to a hold, out of his seatbelt, and was on top of Ace in a heartbeat, with fists and hot ash falling onto Ace’s face. Ace gave as good as he got and managed to land a hit on the cop’s nose.

It only lasted a few seconds, until both decided that enough damage was done.

The cop got back into his own seat, wiped his nose with the back of his hand to check for blood, then dragged his fingers over his temples and groaned.

Ace massaged his jaw. “I get it,” he said after they had both caught their breath. “Feeling stuck. I get it.”

“You are only at the beginning of your life.”

Ace shrugged. “I still get it.”

They sat in silence in their weird, discharged mood.

“Nice punch,” the cop said finally.

Ace replied with an offered hand. “Ace.”

“Smoker,” the cop said, shook it, and Ace spat.

“Did your parents name you that or is that a weird nickname?”

“You are hardly one to talk - my mother’s idea of a unique name.”

“Dude, you really took the self-fulfilling prophecies to heart. First the abusive cop thing, and then you smoke like a chimney.”

“If you don’t shut up, I’m gonna fuck up again, and punch you once more.”

Ace grinned. “You think that was a fuck up? It was successful proof of my hypothesis. You are frustrated with the situation you are in: Maybe you aren’t a bad guy.”

Smoker seemed stunned and affronted. “I just punched you because I didn’t want to hear the truth! Something is super wrong with you, brat.”

Ace shrugged. “You are hardly one to talk,” he mimicked. “Wanna act like we put cold coke cans on our swelling faces and then just drink them?”

And somehow that worked.

* * *

Smoker startles Ace by sitting down next to him, on the brittle garden bank that definitely didn't get a new layer of paint since Ace sat on it last. Ace is inspecting the hedge, asking himself if Smoker is the one who trims it.

"I'm sure I don't have to ask you if anyone followed you," Smoker says, through his around the cigar clenched teeth.

'Yet, you just did,' Ace wants to say, but the little games they used to play won't bring them further now.

"No one tried, no one did."

"You've gotten more careful," Smoker says, leaning back on the bank. "But not careful enough when I look at your right hand."

Ace clenches the remainder of his hand. His little finger is missing. It healed well, but he sometimes feels pain in the lacking digit, or as if the weight of the finger is missing. It makes his sense of balance feel off. He will adjust, he is sure of it. It might just take some time.

Ace shrugs. "It happened weeks before we escaped. But I got my revenge.”

They look at the hedge in silence.

Smoker will tell Ace in his time, and no one else's, why he asked to see Ace. Better to just wait him out. Smoker likes feeling in control. Riling him up now, when stakes are this high, just isn’t worth it.

"Contact with Deuce broke."

It takes a moment to sink in.

Ace's insides feel like someone used a petrifying curse on them.

"How could that happen?!" He screams when he finds his voice. "You have people in there with him: They have to know where he is and what the fuck is going on!"

"We lost connection to all of them. There seems to be some kind of riot."

Ace’s petrified insides decay.

"Some of Akainu's infiltrators are guards," he croaks out. "They can't not be there."

"We don't know yet. Contact broke five hours ago. They are most likely busy getting the situation under control."

"But we don't know the situation? If Deuce managed to...do it."

"We don't know about him. Or Shiryu."

Ace huffs in frustration. "You are about as useful as a ninja's drum kit, you know that?"

He stands up abruptly. Breathes in a moment while Smoker, next to him, frowning at the hedge, takes a drag of his cigar. Ace steals it right out of his mouth, sits back down, and fills his stone-intestines with smoke.

"I'm gonna have to tell them all tomorrow. All our last actions were fuck-ups!” He takes another deep drag. "Including this cigar and showing Luffy the Emoji movie."

And Marco, he doesn't say. Marco, who has empty eyes and a face that reminds Ace of his own, the night he left. And Marco was never supposed to look like that. Marco, who sometimes sings about the chores he has to do, but only when Ace is there; to amuse him. Marco, who would have sung for his daughter’s amusement. Endlessly.

"What is the Emoji movie?" Smoker asks, confused.

"It's probably your best character attribute that you don't know a thing about that - I won't ruin that for you." Ace breathes smoke out, then gets up and leaves. With the cigar.


	8. A tale of growth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Mentions of Violence, and discussion of a minor Character death.

Marco arrives at Moby Street at two, exactly how he promised Luffy. He still spends time on Moby street, but it's only now that it hurts to not think of it as home anymore.

Most of his sibling’s cars are already parked on the street. Between them, Ace’s motorcycle that he last saw in Atmos's workshop. It was their gift to him for his seventeenth birthday. Marco wants to kick it. Fossa is standing next to his car, an old, grey Chevrolet that he actually asked to be made into a made mob family member once, and throws birthday parties for. Fossa’s gruff face turns towards Marco, and he nods.

Bless Fossa, Marco thinks. For not showing up at his home, in the last week, to try to help him in any way. Bless Fossa for not showering him in sympathy. For leaving him space. Fossa looks a bit rough around the edges, but he is a highly empathic person. He never spoke much, but he is a funny guy when he feels completely comfortable. He was one of his siblings that really gained confidence from Luffy's unconditional love when they met. Fossa and Ace had bonded over their love for everything that has more than 160 brake horsepower, later on.

"He is already here, I see," Fossa says, pointing at Ace's motorcycle. Marco doesn't answer, just gives the Ducati an annihilating glare. "He's got some timing." Marco doesn't miss the fleeting glance in his direction that accompanies Fossa's words. Marco basks in the knowledge that, with Fossa at least, glances will be all they share for now. Marco isn't ready for words. Bless Fossa for not asking him if he will be alright with this. Bless him for not making Marco admit how thinking about Ace turns his throat into ashes and his stomach into fire.

They walk through the yard, with its nice rose garden, up to the main house.

"Izou told me about his hand. Is it this bad?"

Marco frowns up at Fossa, a step higher on the stairs of the porch. "What?" he asks.

"Hm? I thought you talked to Ace yesterday?"

"How do you know?"

"Izou."

Trust Izou to know all of Marco's steps. He sometimes takes his intelligence gathering a bit far.

"I saw him, yes. What about his hand?" He thinks about how Luffy, yesterday, said ‘Something happened. I guess you already saw.’

But Marco had been trying to not see.

"He lost a part of it. He told Izou something about how it got smashed with an iron pole."

Marco swallows heavily. He doesn't know what to think. How to think. Again. He robotically follows Fossa up the stairs, into the living room, which is so filled with people, their arrival goes unnoticed.

Ace isn't looking at Marco, and that's serving him just fine. Marco can't bring himself, though. To not look at Ace. To not see. The vision of the man Ace would become was something he so desperately tried to get a glimpse of, and protect at all costs - and now here he is: The grown-up Ace. Who won't look at him. Who smiles warmly. Who is missing a finger, and has obviously gone through a lot while Marco wasn't there to witness it, and who still overcame these traumas to become who he was meant to be. Someone whose smile is real. Maybe even contented.

But maybe, just maybe, Ace is faking it. He could, Marco knows. He was always good at acting happy. At trying to convince himself that he was alright, that what happened to him had been alright. His true challenge didn't lie in excitement for the moment, but in not feeling hopelessness while reflecting.

There was always a dim light of happiness in Ace, waiting to break through if given the chance. A little seed, waiting for the perfect conditions to grow that hadn't been granted before. Marco thought he had cultivated it. Brought it out, and he tried to care for it for the best of his ability, but now Ace seems to be glowing from the light within him. It's blinding. It's mesmerizing.

The other’s eyes are glued to Ace, too. They all can feel it. Ace didn't sit down in the middle of the room; he chose a cozy armchair more in the corner, next to Luffy, but they all somehow migrated towards him, and now he is the center. Atmos and Pops aren't there, yet, but that doesn't stop Marco's siblings from buzzing around Ace like moths to his flame.

"Maaan, it's so good to have you back," Fossa says. He has entered just before Marco, to practically heave Ace out of his seat, and wrap him in a bone-crushing hug. Marco is standing right behind them. He can see how Ace's eyes are closed in enjoyment as he hugs Fossa right back with all his strength. His eyes open, while still being wrapped around Fossa, and find Marco's, right behind them, on accident.

They stare at each other. Frozen. Until Fossa takes Ace's head in his hands to crush their foreheads together so vigorously, it makes an audible sound. They both crunch their faces, then laugh at one another.

"It feels great to see you all again," Ace says, grinning, and rubbing his forehead with what is left of his right hand. How did it happen? How much pain did Ace go through? While Marco was shopping for baby clothes?

"Hey, Marco made it, too," Blenheim says.

All eyes on Marco. His siblings don't know how to react, so they opt for starring. It's Haruta who comes up to him to engulf him in a hug. "Hey," she says, into his sternum, the highest point she can reach. "I'm glad you came. These assholes turn vile when you are not around." Marco manages a tiny smile, but it doesn't reach his eyes, and he knows it. Over Haruta's head, he watches Ace turn away from him to talk to Izou. Why do their interactions always end with someone turning away, leaving the other behind at a graveyard?

Blenheim comes up to Marco and puts his arm around him. "You holding up alright? Wanna go for a drink later on?"

"I'm fine," he says, and Blenheim is kind enough to not call him out on his lie. "And I can't, I have to get home to Ilma." That is a bigger lie than the 'I'm fine' thing. There is no home, and Ilma and he can't help each other anymore. Their pain can't be shared, it's too different in its nature.

Ilma, in search of support Marco doesn't know anymore how to give her, left to spend the evening (and probably the night) with a friend. He is glad that she has a support system that stretches further than Marco.

He can't have a heart to heart with one of his siblings, though. Not yet. He understood that clearly when Luffy asked if he knew how he felt, and he didn't and still doesn't. He has to know first. Blenheim looks ready to protest, but it falls short.

Atmos and Pops enter the living room, Stefan right on their heels. Stefan goes wild when he recognizes Ace. Marco hasn't seen him this active in years. He barks and runs around Ace in circles. Ace laughs, crouches down to pet him and says a few words in soft Portuguese. Since Ace, Marco can't hear the language without his veins feeling like they are tightening inside his arms like shackles.

"Son," Pops shouts in his earth-shaking voice and unfolds his arms for Ace.

Ace runs up to him, his own arms opening up, but it's Atmos, instead of Pops, who falls around his neck in sobs. "Ace," he cries. "Ace your hand." Atmos takes Ace's hand in his, softly, as he would handle a hurt butterfly, and heavy teardrops fall onto it.

"It's alright," Ace says smiling up at him kindly.

So kind and wholesome. So God damn alright with what happened. That's not true and not fair and Marco knows it, but how dare Ace be so fucking happy and calm as a Buddha, when Marco feels like his own skin is trying to dissolve the flesh it's holding.

Ace didn't come back to win their breakup, or to show him how good he is doing. Marco genuinely believes that he is here to help, but god damn him and that warm only-for-Luffy-smile that they used to fight so hard for. It's apparently being thrown out like confetti these days. God damn him.

Pops gently frees Ace out of Atmos grip. He puts his hands, as big as drum snares, on Ace's shoulders, smothering him in the process, and just looks at him. Ace smiles up at him with pride in his eyes, and they all turn silent, while the two have their moment. Then Pops drags him in almost violently, and Ace pushes his face into Pop's navel. Ace's arms can't even reach around Pops halfway, but he is certainly trying.

"My lost son came home to his old father. Ace, my boy, however glum your news might be, today will go down as a good day."

Marco can see Ace shaking and his breathing is too fast, but when he pulls his head out of Pops belly his eyes are dry and his smile big.

"I can get behind that as the motto for today," he says.

Pops laughs and Stefan jumps around them and it's the happy family reunion that Ace deserves. Marco tries to get into that mindset as his motto for today. Damn Ace, though.

"Okay," Ace breathes and smiles embarrassed into their group. "Enough of that mushy shit, y'all all have gotten sentimental in your old age!"

"Hear, hear!" Namur exclaims with a laugh.

"I have news. Some good, some bad."

They all gather themself, falling silent, and look at Ace.

He searches for Luffy's gaze for a second, then starts to speak. "First of all, it's seriously great to be home again. Not that I missed you or anything."

They laugh again.

"I'm here, because.. I'm gonna do the band-aid ripping technique: My cover was blown."

Marco doesn't know what cover. He has no idea of what exactly Ace was up to since he left. His siblings know better than to bring Ace up to him, but Marco knows that Izou and Ace worked closely together. Izou kept the rest of the family informed.

"Is that how that happened ?" Blenheim asks, gesturing to Ace's fingers.

Ace nods and lets out a frustrated noise. "We were so close. Or at least we thought we were. We thought we had them. We had tabs on Laffitte and learned that Teach was in England. It looked very good for us, so Deuce and I went in - and got captured immediately."

He stops for a moment, and his gaze is far away.

"It took us three weeks to escape. We won that fight. With a few casualties." He holds up his hand and smiles. "But we won: Laffitte is dead!"

His siblings cheer, while Marco puzzles over the name 'Laffitte' and comes up empty.

"On Laffitte’s laptop, we managed to recover an email conversation. The IP address led to Sussex; we are sure that he was talking to Teach. In these emails, we found confirmation that they had realized who I am. Laffitte sent pictures of us to Blackbeard and he recognized me. We also found plans for a private plane to fly to the US, leaving in a few days."

He takes a deep breath.

"Blackbeard is coming."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'making Marco admit how thinking about Ace turns his throat into ashes and his stomach into fire.'  
> Maaan at first I wrote 'turning his stomach into lava' and accidentally gave myself a Marineford war-flashback.


	9. Luffy

People tell Luffy often that he loves more than others. Luffy laughs at that and says that he loves just enough. The people around him are worth being loved a lot. He loves every single person in this room. Especially his big brother.

Ace promised him that he would never die, and Luffy will hold him to it till his last breath, but Luffy worries about the rest of the Whitebeard family.

Luffy got stronger, to protect, and never lose anyone he loves ever again, but this is Ace's fight. Ace also can't lose more people; he will try his hardest to make sure everyone is fine in the end. And Luffy will make sure that Ace is fine, so that will all work out quite nicely.

His big brother is still standing in front of them, waiting for their reactions.

Blackbeard is coming.

The silence is deafening, and Luffy doesn't do well with silence. He makes a 'Hmmm?' sound, his head held sideways. "So we just kick him to the moon, right?"

Marco, almost hidden in the other corner of the room, twitches with unease. Luffy doesn't like it. Marco is supposed to be confident, but at the moment, Marco is barely Marco. He hopes Ace can change that. They both were the happiest when they were together.

"He sounds like a caged animal. I say we euthanize that bitch on sight," Haruta claims.

"Teach isn't dumb. I hate to say it, but he isn't. He has a plan, and he will strike here," Ace says, and his eyes shift to Luffy once more. "There is something else I have to tell you: After Deuce and I got into Laffitte’s group, we learned about a middleman who orchestrated between the drug cartel in Columbia and Blackbeard’s ships. They used it to smuggle cocaine over to their gas stations that were already in on the gasoline scheme. This guy is called Shiryu, and he is currently in the sixth hell of Impel Down."

Marco, in his corner, looks confused from left to right, but can't seem to find answers to his unvoiced questions in the faces of his family members. He decides to frown at the floor.

"My grandfather and Akainu got Deuce into Impel Down. Yesterday we lost contact with everyone in there, for a few hours. There was some kind of uproar, and the situation is still chaotic. We don't know yet where Deuce is and if he managed to kill Shiryu. If he did, Teach has to deal with the power vacuum of not only Laffitte but also the cartel in Columbia. If he doesn't, he will lose that whole sector. We might have time to find him there and plan an ambush."

"No," Pops declares immediately. "We stay where we are. Let him come to us with his schemes and tricks. We will wait."

Ace doesn't look happy about that.

Behind them, Marco leaves the room unnoticed, and Luffy is quick to follow. He isn't interested in the political talk that will come next. They will tell him later what they decided. Luffy never expected a criminal’s life to be so full of politics instead of fun and adventure.

Ace gives him a tiny smile as Luffy walks past. It means 'I'm gonna tell you the short version later.' And maybe it also means 'I did feel Marco leave the room, please make sure he is alright.' Luffy will.

Marco is one floor above them, standing next to his old room, and staring at the pencil marks on the door frame that measure Luffy's growth during his time here. From 'Luffy is twelve, and this tall' to 'Luffy is seventeen and probably won't grow taller.'

Luffy moved in with Zoro, and away from the Whitebeard family at seventeen - he isn't one to dwell on the past, but the lines seem important now.

No lines say that Ace lived here. He claimed that he was pretty much done with puberty by the time they arrived, and it wouldn't make much sense since he wouldn't grow, but that turned out to be false. Ace grew while he was here. Marco became his trellis to climb up on, and it took a while for Ace to trust Marco to not let him fall, but then he thrived. That's how Thatch used to explain it.

Luffy doesn't like serious talks much, and at the moment, they feel to be needed too often. He thinks he knows why Marco is looking at the pencil marks now. It's a reason far too serious for Luffy's liking, but what he likes less is Marco suffering.

He steps up to Marco. He only registers that Luffy is there, once Luffy is right in front of him. Luffy is twenty-three and not tall enough to gather Marco in his arms, the way Pops did after the funeral, but he can offer his words.

Marco's eyes have that far away look they had for a while after Ace left. As if they could follow him. It's not about Ace this time, and Luffy didn't manage to fix this then, he doesn't know if he can now.

"Did I grow since we measured last time?" he asks, pressing his back to the door frame.

Marco blinks himself out of his state and checks. "Maybe a centimeter."

"What, really?? Do you have a pen?" Marco smiles a sad smile and rummages through his pockets for one. He holds Luffy's head still while he pencils it in. "Write 'Luffy is twenty-three and proved you all wrong again.' Okay?"

"How about 'Luffy is twenty-three and so full of shit it added a centimeter?"

"That has the same outcome."

Marco shakes his head fondly at him and starts to write. Luffy turns around to read, and it says 'Luffy is twenty-three and will outgrow us all, just to spite us.' Luffy laughs.

Marco doesn't. Marco's eyes are traveling back in time again. Luffy lets him. "What," Marco starts hesitantly, "exactly did Ace do in the last years? I didn't understand a word of what they talked about."

Luffy can't answer that to the extent, that Marco deserves. Only one person can do that.

"I think you have to ask Ace yourself."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is quiet short, next one will be longer. It's just super hard for me to write out of Luffy's point of view, trying to do justice to his one brain cell energy, and high wisdom, at the same time.  
> This chapter is also designed to highlight Marco's feeling of distance to all that happened, but I realize that must be frustrating as a reader - Ace will tell his whole story quiet soon.  
> Also, while this does play in America, you can pry the metric system from my European, snobby, cold, dead, hands.


	10. A second gaze

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Underage drinking, some violence

After their tactical talk, they all need something to lighten the mood, and it's Namur who looks into their sullen faces and says, "well, I think we should still celebrate that Ace is back."

And as if they all just waited for that - the mood is over. All faces lift, and Ace is incredibly glad that his family is always down for a good time. He spent way too long periods being serious in the last years. It made him appreciative of every laugh and party he could let slip in.

With practiced hands, the Whitebeard division siblings head out to bring booze, food, and music to the living room, and it doesn't take long for all of them to get to a level of drunkenness that makes them come up to Ace, teary-eyed, telling him how much they missed him.

He is currently being smothered by Rakuyo, who accidentally empties half his beer on Ace's jumper, but Ace accepts that gladly as a necessary bonding experience. He is enjoying this so much it feels unreal.

To have this: His family accepting him back in. As if he never left. He wasn't sure it would be like this and fully braced himself for the feeling of being estranged. But they are making damn sure he doesn't have the time to even let that thought come up.

It's not like time stopped, though. Rakuyo isn't talking about girls he'd like to 'have them wrap their legs around him like a scarf while he goes down on them' but about a wife he met in a bookstore and children they are planning to make.

Namur doesn't swim in competition anymore.

Blamenco, who only ever left his computer out of sight when the power went out, goes on hiking trips now. (And it did wonders to him, in Ace opinion, he doesn't look like a garden gnome statue of a depressed school shooter anymore.)

Vista has a three-year-old boy with the girl he had an on-off relationship with when Ace saw him last.

Ace can't wait to get back into touch with all of them. First of all Marco.

Marco got married and had a stillborn daughter. It doesn't cover the tragedy of Marco.

Over Rakuyo's arm, slung around his shoulder, he watches Marco who is talking to Pops since he and Luffy came down the stairs a few minutes ago. Ace is waiting for his chance to speak to him in private but he doesn't know the words he wants to tell him. No, that's not true. Words were never a problem for Ace, but sometimes they don't mean enough and this is one of these situations. Ace has to think about his next steps. He has been forced to do that a lot while he was undercover; he has practice.

Pops has both his hands on Marco's shoulders and their faces are serious. Marco is drinking out of a glass filled with a clear liquid that is most likely not water. Marco doesn't do a 'this alcohol I just drank, feels like downing a torch' face, but Marco can drink vodka like a champ. It makes Ace think of the first time they went partying together.

The Whitebeard family had legal businesses (that mostly used to be connected to some shady things, before the deal with the cops came into play), and Vista's division owned a few clubs.

Ace had been with the Whitebeard family for about a month, and he hadn't tried to make friends there. He spent the time that Luffy wasted in school, out on the streets, stealing and drinking with a group of guys he felt indifferent about, and his nights, after Luffy had gone to bed, with men he felt more and more bored with.

Marco and Thatch were both trying hard to make him part of their family. Thatch started trying to teach Ace some of his cooking skills and 'coincidentally' hung out in the main house's kitchen, when Ace was using it, much to Ace's annoyance.

Marco had been more successful. He saw Ace observing him and Vista in a sparring match, and asked if Ace would like to join. He really had Ace's interest when Ace got his ass completely whooped by Marco, which hadn't happened to him in a long time.

That day, Ace came home late in the evening, when he ran into Marco, dressed nicely in tight pants and a fancy shirt.

"You look like Spongebob's house if it wouldn't be in Bikini Bottom but in Dubai."

Marco had already learned how to pick up on Ace's jokes and how to beat them to death with him. "You look like the underpaid worker that I brought from a third world country to keep that house clean."

Ace laughed, "Pretty racist. I'm definitely gonna piss in the corners and draw dicks on the wall."

"You're gonna get fired and have to go back to living in Bikini Bottom."

"Did you just classify Bikini Bottom as a third world country?" Ace asked, fake offended.

"Well, they live in a hierarchy under Neptun, and the Chum-bucket speaks for itself, doesn't it?"

"Only a Dubai douche would judge Bikini Bottom like this. I bet you thought you saved me out of poverty when you exploited me as a worker."

Marco laughed at Ace through the mirror that he was standing in front of. "Let me make it up to you. I can show you a better place for entertainment than the Chum-bucket: It's opening night in Vista's new club. Do you wanna come?" He asked and turned around to Ace.

Ace hesitated. He had been cautious about getting too close to the Whitebeard siblings, but his 'successful night' induced endorphin high was already leaving his body, and in the back of his head he could feel the pulse of thoughts he tried to ban away. A night of excitement and alcohol seemed like a better idea than lying next to a snoring Luffy, while his head ran wild till the weed did its thing.

"Do I have to go for Dubai dickbag douche aesthetic as a look?"

"Well, if you want anyone to buy you a drink you might want to look a little less exploited working class."

"I'm just gonna drink the blood of the rich, I think."

"In that case, we are leaving in four minutes."

They walked past the impressive line in front of Vista's club at one am. The security guard gave Marco a friendly, one-armed hug, then let them right through.

The place was underground and dark, and the music a heavy electro beat. Ace liked it. Especially how he hadn't been asked for an ID and could probably order whatever he wanted.

Vista sat with Izou, Thatch, and Blenheim in the VIP lounge. They greeted Marco enthusiastically, and Ace surprised.

"You brought my little foundling? To a club?" Thatch yelled over the music. "Wait, does that mean I have to act responsibly now?"

"Don't bother," Ace said, already annoyed with Thatch. "It's not like I could copy any bad habits of you that are worse than your usual version of a nice evening."

"Are you saying cooking is badass? Finally, someone agrees!"

"I'm saying you are too boring for me to learn anything from, and I already need a drink."

"No alkohol! You are literally a fetus. A baby protozoa."

"Marco, don't tell me you brought me to a club, where no bartender would supervise my alcohol intake, to have it be controlled by Elvis here."

"I'm sure one beer is fine. Right Thatch?" Marco said conciliatory.

"Will I be a cool uncle if I let you, Ace?" Thatch asked and grinned up at him.

"You'd be a cool uncle if you could manage to stop me, you soggy, forgotten piece of dumpster fodder," Ace said and got up. "Anyone else want anything?"

"A will to live and a Gin Tonic, please," Blenheim grumbled.

"He is still down because of the girl last week," Izou explained.

"I think I need vodka," Thatch mused. "Yeah. Vodka."

"Me too, please," Marco said, and Ace left for the bar before anyone else could order anything.

The bartender saw him coming over from the Vip lounge and beckoned him over right away.

"You' with the Whitebeard family?" she asked.

Ace wrinkled his nose. "Unluckily associated."

She took a second to recover and laugh it off, then Ace bought the drinks and reveled in getting them without question. Maybe the 'Whitebeard associate' card had some perks.

When he came back to the table, Blenheim was leaning on Marco heavily, telling him about a girl he had met last week, spent an evening with, and didn't get her number or email. "I don't even know her name, but she was perfect. So perfect."

"I think we all were pretty drunk, but I distinctly remember you telling me that 'her breath smelled like she had just given head to a waste incineration plant.' I think you might have forgotten some vital parts of that night," Marco answered.

"So perfect," Blenheim whispered.

Ace drank half his beer in one go, to escape that cringe-conversation. Why had he agreed to go out with these super lame losers? He could have been in bed, having an existential crisis, he thought longingly.

They accepted the drinks that Ace brought to the table gladly. Thatch made a vodka face, taking a baby sip, while Marco downed almost his whole glass without a twitch.

"The cool uncle goes dancing now. Come, Izou, let's show this ungrateful nephew how it's done," Thatch yelled with enthusiasm.

Ace scoffed. "I'm Brazilian: My ancestors danced over the graves of your white, robot dancing, embarrassments of bland white bread forefathers."

"Cool uncles literally are the best dancers in the history of time. We're gonna prove it. Right, Izou?!"

"I guess I have to, otherwise you are gonna make people leave the club in second-hand embarrassment."

"Ace - I still have an eye on you. One beer policy is to be followed. Got me?" Thatch asked while getting up.

"Sure," Ace said, preoccupied with filling his half-empty bottle up with the rest of Thatch's vodka, as soon as he was out of sight, while Marco next to him chuckled.

"Oh, here they go. Jesus Christ - Thatch must be dead set on embarrassing you; he brought out the big guns," Vista said alarmed.

Indeed Thatch was doing the Elvis hips. Izou next to him danced as gracefully as someone who was facepalming could.

"Is that what learning how to dance your name in Montessori, or Waldorf school, or whatever looks like?" Ace asked.

"I don't think that's his name. That looks more like 'I'm desperate and depressed," Vista answered, frowning at Thatch's dance.

"I haven't gotten laid in months because my hairstyle can't deal with that much movement, and I can't sacrifice it," Ace played along.

"I wink when I buy a 'sex on the beach' and sometimes I close the fridge with my hip."

Ace clinked his bottle against Marco's glass on that. "Savage, Marco. Really savage," he said, impressed. "But this is honestly sad, I have more moves with just one eyebrow," and felt the eyebrow in question twitch.

Marco grinned at him and finished his vodka. "I don't doubt it," he said, then took his vibrating phone out of his pocket.

"Oh my God," exclaimed Blenheim, out of his Gin Tonic glass. "Look there: At five o'clock. My eyes have never seen beauty like this. Marco - do you think I'm in her league? No: is anyone in her league?"

"Go get her, tiger," Marco said, not even looking up from his phone.

And Blenheim left the table, which meant that Ace could fill his beer-vodka bottle up with his Gin Tonic. Marco didn't see, he was still frowning at his phone, but Vista shot him a questioning gaze. Ace shrugged.

"Everything cool, Marco?" Vista asked.

"someone from Izou's Division," Marco said, looking up from his phone. "Apparently, there was a tiny misunderstanding between a gang, and they are having a fight a few streets from here."

"Sooo. Our territory and our problem?" Vista questioned.

"Not yet. They don't ask for backup, it would look threatening. They are going the 'talk it out' route."

"I'm gonna tell Izou."

And he left the table, which meant that Ace could pour the rest of his appletini into his beer-vodka-Gin-Tonic bottle. He was feeling the effect already, his muscles relaxed, and his grin even more prone than usual.

"Thatch isn't even looking, you could have just had that without putting it into your cocktail from hell." Marco sounded almost offended on behalf of the alcohol.

"It's not even so bad, "Ace defended his mixture. "And I wanted the green for the color. Look how pretty it is now," he giggled and held his bottle under Marco's nose.

"That looks like watercolor water you wash your brushes in. And the picture you painted was depressingly grey."

"Are you colorblind? That's so green! I was drawing a meadow. Or Luffy's boogers."

"I'm sure it tastes like Luffy's boogers."

"From experience, I can tell you: No, it doesn't."

"Do I even want to know?"

"Nope."

In that second, Thatch came back, sweating and red-faced, but hairstyle still standing tall. "Good boy, Ace. Still just drinking your beer. That's still the first bottle, right, Marco?"

"It sure is," Marco said, and Ace was too drunk to not giggle wholeheartedly over that.

"Looks like we got ourselves a lightweight. Isn't he cute?"

"Totally. Cute and innocent," Marco said, nodding along sincerely.

"Well, are you two gonna come to dance, or what? - Jungle boy, I'm ready for your moves."

And that was how the Whitebeard family found out that Ace couldn't dance at all, but got away with it through sheer enthusiasm.

An hour later, Ace was still clutching his first bottle of beer. It didn't hold any beer at all anymore. Marco, Izou, Thatch, and he were smoking outside, in a small park right behind the club, trying to cool down after an ambitious try to dance their names that ended in a bit of blood and a few pulled muscles.

"I think we should be going home soon," Marco said with a look at Ace, who was happily swaying from left to right, while taking a sip of his cocktail that kinda did taste like Luffy's boggers by now.

"Yeah," Izou agreed. "I'm also done - Thatch?" Thatch nodded.

"Y'all boring. Really. You probably think spaghetti with the family is the highlight of the week," Ace complained.

"You'd think so too, if you would have tried Thatch's spaghetti before," Izou said flatly.

Marco's phone went off, and Ace was too drunk to make a remark about how lame it was to have the godfather's theme as a ringtone. Ace was also too drunk to realize the shift in atmosphere as the Whitebeard siblings stared at Marco, on the phone. "Okay," Marco ended the call and looked at them calmly but committed. "The 'talk it out' route failed. They've got beaten up. Vista can stay behind with Ace. One of you get Blenheim, and then we meet here in 5 minutes and go."

Thatch and Izou got up immediately, and Ace stared at Marco puzzled. "Wait? You gonna punch some bitches? I want to come. I can fight," he said and tried hard at not looking drunk.

Apparently, he was lousy as an actor, because Marco laughed and said, "I think the only thing you should fight tonight is your bed. Vista will take you home and you can-"

They heard it at the same time. Ace had only just cataloged the noise as 'probably a threat' when Marco had already turned around and stepped in front of him.

Six men had come up over the meadow. Silent and in a wide stance, they formed up in front of them, and Ace thought that it was a tiny bit ridiculous, but his one still active brain cell persistently signaled him to announce that out loud.

"You the Whitebeards, right?" The smallest one of them said. Always the smallest that prove their big dick energy often enough to become leaders. "Your little henchman said we'd find ya' here."

"What did you do to them?" Marco asked, and his voice was composed, but Ace saw the muscles tightening in his shoulders.

"What we do with people who try to get their nose too deep into our shit. Whitebeard ain't what he used to," the men said and pointed his finger at Marco, "but seems like you didn't get the message yet."

"Oh, I think I got it," Marco said, and then he moved so fast that Ace could only blink blank-faced, as the two men to his left fell to the ground.

The other four, including their leader, reacted faster and were on Marco a second later.

And suddenly, Ace was sober again.

He smashed his beer bottle against the ground. Armed with the sharp and broken bottleneck, he was about to throw himself into the battle, when Izou, Thatch, Vista, and Blenheim were already on the remaining four, now whining, bitches of wasted flesh on the ground.

The fight was over before Ace could even take more than three steps.

Marco had been holding back in their sparring matches, that much was clear now.

And maybe, just maybe, these Whitebeard guys weren't as big as losers as he had originally thought.

Standing with the remains of his loyal bottle in hand, he said mournfully, "I just wasted my beer-vodka-Gin-Tonic-appletini-cider-captain-morgan-wine-Jägermeister-drink for nothing."

Thach, dragging a strand of hair that had escaped his pompadour during the fight, and still standing on the tiny leader's twitching hand, yelled, "Aaace, you lied to your nice and trusting uncle Thatch? I can't believe it! I'm such a good role model - where did I go wrong?" And he stomped his foot down on the squeaking leader's fingers.

* * *

After that, Ace had begrudgingly started to respect the Whitebeard family. They might have been goofy idiots by day, but holy hell, they could switch gears in seconds, and it left a lasting impression on him.

Ace smirks, thinking about his first wonky steps into their direction. He hadn't expected to find a family, an actual family, when he came here, and now, here he is: Surrounded by the people he loves most in the world, who love him right back, as Namur, draped around his shoulder, tells him again and again. Ace doesn't get tired of saying it back, and he refuses to let the wish of someone else saying these words, again, come up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Bernie Voice* I am once again asking for your support through validation in form of comments or kudos.


	11. A tiny end

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: The usual: Alcohol, mentions of underage, and everyone being fucked up. Casual homophobia.  
> Again, I think casual toxicity is the worst, because it gets normalized, minimized, and not deal with. Ace uses a joke to dissolve the situation, he doesn't call out.

It takes a lot, and Marco worked hard for it over the last hours, but he achieved what he sat out to do: Marco is drunk as fuck. He is so drunk he thinks that perhaps he will even manage to sleep. Maybe he can pass out in his old bed and camouflage that as refreshing eight, nice, hours of good rest. He has been sitting at the kitchen table with Pops for a good hour now, drinking his old man under the table, which he didn't even know was possible. From the living room, they hear the sound of the party still going strong, even as late as it is.

He hears Luffy and Zoro, who joined in a while ago, screaming something about an action scene they are filming for Zoro's college project movie. Actually, he just hears Luffy screaming about that, and Zoro yelling for him to stop spoiling, and Ace laughing.

He could pick Ace's laugh out of a thousand people’s, mostly because it's the only sound that ever made him feel like his chest was too tiny for his heart.

No, that's not true anymore. His daughter's heartbeat. Back when she had one.

That fucking doctor's appointment when he first got to hear her heartbeat. Ilma cried, and Marco made a recording with his phone. The only sound she will ever make. He hasn't listened to it after his little girl's heart stopped beating. He probably will tonight.

"Fuck," he says into his glass.

Water. Why is he drinking water? That wasn't his plan at all. That is more like sabotage. "Why water?" he manages to ask.

"Because I think that drinking more won't make you talk more," Pops answers. His voice is stern, his eyes as unfathomable as ever, and Marco wants to laugh, to make him laugh because Pops should always be happy. He is an immovable mountain in which’s shadow Marco can crumble, recover and hide, but he will have to emerge at one point, and when he becomes aware again of the storms outside, he needs Pops to be as much as himself as he can be, to give Marco the feeling that Pops can catch him if need be. Marco is too drunk for this.

"I'm sorry, Pops," he babbles, before he even knows what he wants to say, and needs to wrap his tongue around the words. It sounds even more sluggish than he imagined.

"Whatever for? Being sad is not a sin, nor something you need to change if you aren't ready."

Marco tries to think about that, or at least repeat that often enough in his head so that he can think about it tomorrow. "That's not it." He makes an effort to speak clearly. "I'm sorry I couldn't give you a grandchild. You were so excited for her."

Pops looks like he wants to punch him for a second, and Marco catches himself thinking 'yes, please', but then Pops just takes Marco's hand in his and searches for his gaze. "I have lots of children and grandchildren, many of them idiots. Loved idiots, but idiots nonetheless. Yet none of them ever said anything this dumb to me."

"Remember how Luffy once asked if lesbians can only have female babies?"

"That is a close second." They both manage a tiny smile. "What happened was not your fault, Marco. This is a tragedy, but it is not a question of blame - I see in your eyes. You feel guilty. But guilt won't bring you further now. It will be hard, but you will overcome this pain. And if you and Ilma by then still want a child, you ca-"

"No!" Marco falls into his word, which he never does. "No," he repeats calmer. "I don't think Ilma and I can go through that again. I don't even know if we can go through this right now."

"You have to make a decision about that soon, son. When Blackbeard comes we need to stand together, as strong as we can. You need to know if you want her to be here, or far away from all of that is to come."

He nods because he feels like he can't answer anymore. His head is buzzing and Ace, in the other room, needs _to shut the fuck up_!

"I'm a go to bed."

Pops nods and asks, "can you make it alone?"

"Think so."

And he does. Eventually. There haven't always been this many stairs, he is sure of it.

Fossa, on his way back to the living room, passes him, and Marco thinks he is saying something to Marco, but since standing up the blood rushing in his ears is too loud for him to hear much. Wordlessly he plucks the cigarette from behind Fossa's ear and continues his voyage up to his old room.

'Luffy is twenty-three' glares at him, and he glares right back.

Marco collapses in bed, closes his eyes, and the room starts spinning, so he looks up again. He hasn't been in this room much, since moving out six years ago. The books are old, the laptop on the desk is collecting dusk, as are the framed photos right next to it. He looks at them in the shine of Fossa's now lit cigarette. Why does he even have a lighter in his pocket? He doesn't smoke anymore.

The first picture is of his family, it is the biggest, by far, and always reminded Marco of the horrible group pictures that schools force their students to take.

The second is of him and Pops, at one of Namur's swimming competitions, smiling brightly at the camera.

The third is of him with a tiny, wrinkly, newborn Haruta, taken a day after she had been found, screaming her minuscule lungs out, on their doorstep. Thirteen years old Marco beams at her in the picture, while Thatch tries to feed her formula, and Pops laughs in the background.

The fourth is of him and Ace. Marco closes his eyes again, to not see it. To not see.

He still does, plastered to the inside of his head, where it has been stored for years.

Marco and Ace, after they had gotten their tattoos. Bare chests, under the shade of the cherry tree in the backyard. Smiling at each other in a way that's so intimate, that his siblings, with snickering, used to describe the photo as ’hard to look at, because it makes you feel like an intruder.’

He unconsciously starts to stroke his chest, where the ink in Ace's handwriting sits. Where on Ace's chest Marco's handwriting remains. As proof that they had been. This connection will be until they both stop breathing and their skin decays and gets eaten up by worms, or burned to ashes. He is glad about that most times. But sometimes, he wants to run to the next twenty-four-hour open shady tattoo studio, who's employees' tattoos look more like high school bathrooms than art, and just cover it up with whatever that tattoo artist sees fit. He'd say yes to a skull, or an anchor when that mood strikes.

He thinks about parents, who get tattoos of the audio waves of their children's heartbeats. He could cover the fucking half-ass sentence on his chest with that. Overwrite heartbreak with heartbreak.

When did loving become so difficult?

He thinks of Ilma, pragmatic Ilma, so good at finding solutions, looking at him with empty hands, and eyes, and belly, and how the fuck did they end up here?

Does Ilma feel this all-consuming guilt? Or a variation of if. Guilt comes in many forms and all bring on new horrors.

Marco wonders if he should puke because he'd feel better in the morning and he certainly could take a break from his thoughts, but it's too much of a hassle.

In the end, all he manages to do is unlocking his phone with shaky fingers and opening up the audio file with his daughter's heartbeat. Fast as a young bird's. His tiny baby bird six feet under the ground. She should have flown, not be buried.

It feels like his pulse is trying to match hers, like he needs to catch up with her, faster, faster, and then he is hyperventilating.

Breathing rapidly into his hands, loud enough so that he can't hear the audio file anymore, he tries to latch on to anything that could take his mind away. Don't think about her.

She is three and this tall. She is showing Marco a flower she just found. Her freckled cheeks are rosy, and she is pure happiness.

She is five and this tall. Crying after a bad fall on asphalt and Marco picks her up and promises her that everything will be alright again.

She is twelve and this tall. With an interest in music, or horse riding, or football, and Pops is at every event he can attend with them, and smiles proudly.

She is fourteen and this tall. Experiencing her first heartbreak. She is throwing doors close and screaming into the horse printed bedding of her pillow, and only comes out again when Marco lures her out, with promises of ice cream and bad horror movies.

She is seventeen and grown-up. Almost old enough to not need her old dad anymore - and Marco will never get this. He won't have this. Any of it.

She has been dead for ten days, and her body is decomposing. Too diminutive to leave much behind. A tiny death in entropy's chain.

He stops hyperventilating, he stops breathing altogether and thinks 'dead, dead, dead, dead.'

Marco is forty-three and has never felt this small. This lost.

He makes an effort to relax his muscles again, breathes in slowly. She is dead, and he can't change it or how he feels about this now. He stops the recording on his phone, and reality shifts back to his old room, filled with good memories of him, and Ace, and Luffy.

Thinking about Ace, in the last six years, had been a major red flag. He did it often, but it filled him with anger, and he used to emerge out of his head with a twisted stomach. Now it has become his saving grace. That's probably a good scale to measure how fucked up he is: How much thinking about Ace hurts or doesn't.

It should hurt, but right now, it feels incredibly good. Diving back into their lifes when they had only just met. Anything to flee from this reality, to cling to something good. Ace in the spring when he was sixteen.

Ace had started to build up trust in them slowly. He cooked spaghetti with Thatch, he let Izou do his makeup, he learned how to repair cars with Fossa, had sparring matches with Marco and Vista. He played (and lost) chess against Pops.

He still spent a lot of his time out and when he came back, with new phones, clothes, and different bags slung around his shoulders, sometimes even purses, who's content he inspected with too much interest, they all had known, what was up: Ace was stealing, getting into fights that left him with bloody noses, and probably drinking too much.

They hadn't known how to bring it up to him, but it worried the Whitebeard family. Not only was Ace, obviously, not in a good mental state, but also how these rather petty crimes were, in the eyes of the law, happening under their flag and endangered their deal with Monkey D. Garp. Since Garp was such a sore topic for Ace, no one wanted to talk to him about this. Namur tried to speak to Luffy, who had laughed and said that his big brother knew what he was doing and would be fine, and that was that. In the end, they decided that Marco, who had the best relationship to Ace, should be the one to talk to Ace about it. And Marco thought about the tiny bit of trust that Ace had gifted him with. Visible in small smiles and some late-night shared blunts.

He understood how special this slight amount of trust was, on a bus ride one late spring evening, when he was on his way home from the gym.

Izou's car had broken down earlier that week. ("Thatch, your fucking martens chewed the cables through, again! The exotic pet phase needs to stop!")

Marco had lent him his, which wasn't a problem because Marco didn't plan to leave the city, and he liked jogging to the gym. He had done so on that evening, but after too many sets of leg press, his legs were shaking too much for him to want to also walk home. So he opted for the bus.

It was pretty late and already dark outside, in the middle of the week, so the bus was empty, and Marco let himself fall into one of the seats in the front, and closed his eyes.

Two stations later, the complete silence the small number of passengers shared was broken by a group of obnoxiously loud laughing teenagers. Marco was on his way of putting his headphones in his ears when he heard one of them say, "If he would have done that to me, I would have crushed his pancreas into phlegm, then make him snort it."

And yes, that was definitely Ace who was on his way to the last line of seats, while the eight guys he was with spat laugher.

"Seriously, Barry. Ace is right. Just don't go there anymore."

"Nah I gotta."

Marco watched as Ace sat down in one of the corner seats. The others following, occupying the last two lines of seats, screaming loud enough for their conversation to be heard if Marco would have been on the other end of a football field.

Ace closed his eyes, and lay his head against the window, while the others joked around and picked on one another.

One of them shook off one of his shoes and held it in the face of his seat neighbor.

"Oh my god dude, stop. That smells like pumas in the zoo."

"I can smell this from here. That can go through as tear gas."

"Your mom can go through as tear gas."

Some of them laughed, and Marco could see almost all eyes turning to Ace, who hadn't laughed nor opened his.

"Ace, what do you think?"

The kid next to him, a guy with a baseball cap and a hoodie on top asked, and dragged the shoeless leg of the sock-kid, up and in Ace's direction.

Ace did open his eyes at that. "Get this shit out of my face right now, this smells like death had a hangover, swallowed his cum sock, then puked it up and put it on your foot." They laughed, as Ace turned his face away, in annoyance, and shut his eyes again.

"Wasn't that what you said about the last guy you fucked, Ace?"

"Listen here, buddy. None would ever fuck anyone, who smells like your sock, or you. You are about as appealing as a lollipop you dropped and rolled around in a barbershop."

"You did say something about that guy's smell," the hoodie-baseball-cap-kid next to Ace said.

Marco's stomach tightened in the pulse usually reserved for cruel fates Marco had encountered as a doctor. He didn't know about that. Ace spent his evenings out late, but Marco assumed he was 'just' drinking. This was severe on another level.

"I said his cum tasted radioactive," Ace huffed out, now clearly annoyed, eyes still closed, and Marco felt his guts clench once more. "Dude lived off pizza and CS/GO."

"Maan, I wish I could do that!"

"Don't know, doesn't sound so appealing to me," Sock-dude said, and Ace opened his eyes again and gave him a smug smile.

"You jealous, because you ain't gettin' any? Don't worry, we can find you a girl that is into sex that feels like having a bin bag full of mayonnaise placed on top of her, where it wobbles around and falls off a minute later with a wet slap sound and the groan of accomplishment."

The group hollowed laughter, and Marco couldn't help himself snorting lightly.

"Seems like Ace thought a lot about how sex with you would feel like, Ossa, better watch your ass," Hoodie-guy said and punched Ace lightly on the arm.

Ace grinned. "Before I'd touch that I'd actually put my dick in a bag of mayonnaise. Fuck, I'd even go for hot sauce - you guys are missing your stop."

"Fuck," said Ossa, and jumped on one foot to the door, his shoe being held hostage by one of the six other guys getting off.

"Later, you fuckwits," one of them yelled, then turned to the direction of the bus driver, screamed, "didn't have a ticket," and jumped out of the opening bus doors.

"Same," the others howled, then followed their friend out of the door.

Ace and the one remaining teen switched to not so loud spoken Spanish which meant that Marco had a second to think.

Ace was having sex with men. Probably older men. Ace came home drunk sometimes, and maybe that was where he got the alcohol? Marco should probably tell Pops, or talk to Ace. God, Marco hadn't thought he'd discover something that would shade such an intense, new, light on Ace and his habits. Should he intervene? Or would that destroy the beginning of their connection to one another?

Marco was too deep in thought to realize that the two remaining people had come up to the middle door, right where he was sitting.

"Oh, Marco - didn't even see you."

Ace grinned at him lightly. It was a different smile than the one he had given his companions.

"Is that the radioactive man?"

"Fuck off Mihar, or I'm kicking you right to Chernobyl," Ace answered and pushed him out of the opening bus doors.

"I didn't have a ticket," he screamed and ran off laughing, while Ace made a face.

The bus drove off, Ace sighed in relief and dropped onto the seat opposite from Marco.

"Sorry about that. They are dumb fucks."

"It's alright to be a dumb fuck in that age," Marco answered.

Ace smiled apologetically, then said, "I'm seriously glad you are here, though. I'm fighting off a narcolepsy attack for like the last ten fucking minutes."

"You mean you need to crash?"

Ace nodded. "Couldn't do that with them. Sorry Marco, you gonna have to deal with getting me home. Tell the bus driver I didn't have a ticket," he yawned.

And just like that, he dropped off. Head against the window, snoring loudly.

* * *

Ace had trusted Marco enough that night to take care of him. He didn't let his body win until he was sure he was in a sufficiently safe spot to fall asleep. Marco had carried him home on his shaking legs, and if he felt more endorphins than what was usual that was surely just because of his workout.

Ace's trust was snoring, drooling, and beautiful, and Marco would have done anything to keep it in that way, but now Ace is downstairs, laughing, with their family and Marco feels like a stranger.

He lies awake for a long time, staring at the ceiling, that is still turning and just won't stop fucking moving. The words that destroyed them, clear in his mind, when the door opens.

"Are you still awake?" Ace whispers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'sex that feels like having a bin bag full of mayonnaise placed on top of her, where it wobbles around and falls off a minute later with a wet slap sound'  
> that's not my joke, I read that on someone's twitter, it made me laugh so much, I had to put it in


	12. A lonely dolphin

_"Are you still awake?" Ace whispers._

Marco stares at Ace silhouette in the doorframe, and the rare times he let himself imagine exactly that come back to him in waves. Ace, just marching right back in, saying, 'Marco, I came home. I regret leaving. Following Teach was dumb, Marco, please, can I come back?'

But Ace didn't come back, he doesn't do regrets, and Marco is mad at him. He thinks. Maybe tomorrow again.

Marco needs to catalog where his appendages are before he can start an actual attempt at getting into a sitting position, to answer Ace's question, but when after a good eight seconds he still only finds his voice he says, "no," and hopes that that's that.

But this is Ace, so it's not.

"Good," Ace says and closes the door behind himself. "Then I can talk to your sleeping form, and you can't answer because you are asleep."

"Fuck you," Marco does answers. "I'm sleep-talking."

"You always said it's weird that Luffy and I can have conversations while we are both asleep," Ace says. With the voice of someone who is talking to a caged animal while coming closer at it - to maybe put a ring through its nose, or brand it.

"Well, it's not like you two remembered the disturbing shit you said to one another in the morning. But I did." He wants to give Ace some examples, but the task seems so difficult.

Ace comes closer, sits down on the edge of the bed, facing towards Marco. "Couldn't have been more disturbing than what we said while awake."

"You have no idea," Marco mutters. He sounds drunk to his own ears. Ears. He managed to catalog his ears. Maybe the rest of his body will come back, and then he can punch Ace in his perfect, pretty, freckled fuck-face. Ace gives him a wobbly smile. Marco hasn't been this close to his perfect freckled face in years, and he is pretty sure that he is starring. It's dark in this room, but he can still make out Ace's feature. "You still have that freckle-formation," he mumbles to himself and pushes his finger into Ace's right cheek. When did he find his fingers? Why can't he tell them now to get out of Ace's face?

"That one you always said, looks like a grinning dolphin?"

"Yeah. It's still there."

"Does it still look happy?"

"No. It's crying," Marco says with that kind of serious honesty that only kids and drunk people can muster.

"It's crying. It's wet. Why is it so sad?"

But it's not the freckle dolphin on Ace's cheek that is crying, but Ace himself. He smiles at Marco in this warm way, and two tears streak down the dolphin's face and onto Marco's finger. Ace leans into the touch. Marco stares at the tears, mesmerized.

"It's not sad. I mean - it is. But mostly, it is conflicted, right now."

"I never thought about it, but it must be lonely. All alone in that ocean of your face."

Ace cries and smiles harder. "Was that a subtle way to call my forehead wide?" He sniffs.

"You need to stop crying now, or you know what will happen," Marco says, the dolphin in Ace's face starts to swim, and Marco is super, super drunk, and Ace is here. His Ace. Right in their old room. "Ace," he says, just to say his name, "you need to stop now, or you will cover us in an avalanche of snot. Things get so ugly when you cry."

"He calls my forehead wide, and then he calls me ugly. Such a gentleman."

"You know you are an ugly crier."

Marco, Marco thinks. Marco, maybe you should test the waters first. There was a time when Marco could have been this honest with Ace, but he isn't sure that they left there to pick right up at that point again.

Ace laughs and makes an effort to stop the tears. So all is still good. "Damn right," he says. "At least I'm not ugly while I breathe!"

He probably means it as a light jab, but Marco just says, "no, you really are not," and Ace's breath hitches, but Marco can't fathom why.

"You think the dolphin misses his family ?" he asks. Maybe that's why. That would make Marco's breath hitch in sadness. A dolphin all alone, without his dolphin friends.

"He did, but he is on his way home to them now. He hopes they will all accept him back in."

Marco tries to say, 'I'm sure, they will,' but it leaves his mouth more like, "I'm sreth y'ill"

"You are even drunker than me. I'm impressed."

Marco drags his head up at that. "You are drunk?" He questions in loud disbelief. "Nah, you aren't drunk! - I didn't see you insult only one stranger. You can't be drunk," he exclaims in certainty.

Ace laughs and brushes away the last of the tears. "I stopped doing that while I was still living here. You know this. You can't measure with that anymore."

"And I also can't measure with kisses anymore. How do I measure now?"

"Don't know yet. Apologies maybe? I haven't thought about it."

"No apologies tonight," Marco bids immediately. "I'm so drunk, I'd accept ‘em."

"I wouldn't do that to you tonight, Marco." Ace sounds way too serious, and his eyebrows are still. Never a good sign. Maybe Marco fucked up, but he doesn't know how. He should be more present, even if the presents sucks.

"What time is it?" he sighs and now makes a real effort to sit up. The room starts to swim again, so Marco concentrates on the dolphin in Ace's face and groans with the grimace of the drunk.

"About four in the morning."

"Huh? When did that happen?" He brushes his fingers through his face to wake himself up a little more. "And why are you here?" He asks, not unkind.

"Luffy and Zoro sleep in our old room." Ace hesitates for a tiny second, but Marco knows him. A second in Ace time means there is something serious on his mind. Ace is so present and ready to react to all situations that get thrown his way. He thinks fast and makes split decisions, where Marco mulls shit over again and again, like 'a ruminant animal' as Ace liked to call it. "I refuse," Ace says with passion - then stops. Hesitates again. "To sleep in a guest room," he finishes, very tiny. "I don't want to sleep in a guest room, here. It would make me feel like I don't belong anymore."

Ace won't look in his eyes, he turns away from Marco, towards the room. Which leaves him staring at the pictures on the desk.

"You belong." It's Marco's turn to hesitate. To choose his words with a lot of care. "No one of the others stopped thinking of you as anything but family after you left."

"And you?"

"Jesus Christ, Ace," he cries and lets himself fall back onto the bed. "I'm mad at you. I'm super, super mad at you. Furious. I'm not tonight, but I will be again by tomorrow. Got me?"

Ace nods, still staring at the pictures.

"And now come in here."

Ace turns to him in surprise.

They don't speak. Just observe one another.

Then, slowly, Ace turns around completely, and Marco opens up the bedding so that he can lie down next to him.

Ace climbs straight into his arms, and maybe this isn't the best idea ever. Marco is a married man in bed with his ex, right now. But it's so much bigger than that. Ace clutches like a vice. He smells like he used to. His hair is the same thick strands of inky black, and pressing his nose in it still starts a tiny firework in Marco's chest.

"I never stopped thinking of you as family," he murmurs reassuringly and cards his hand into Ace's beautiful hair.

"But you also never stopped thinking of Izou's crazy uncle as family."

"He only broke four windows, a kettle, a laptop, and Stefan's dog house. Not my heart. So I think he is a tad higher in the ranking than you are," he half-jokes.

Ace's nose finds his throat, how it did a million times before, and it's such a tiny gesture, but it reminds Marco of so many nights where it landed there. "Can we sleep, like we used to?" Ace asks in a small voice, and Marco is glad it was him, because Marco wants that, too. Desperately. Just for tonight. This night where nothing matters.

Ilma is too pragmatic to cuddle up to him the whole night. She spends maybe half an hour in his arms, then turns away from him, and that's fine. Not what Marco would prefer, he is a very physical lover, but it's fine; he gets what he can take.

Ace, though, after his evening joint, can be rearranged to anyone's liking and fall asleep however one forms him.

Marco discovered that not too long after he and Ace had started to build up their friendship.

The first time they slept next to one another was on a spring evening. One of the first spring evenings in that year. Marco had already brought his plants back out onto his balcony. The first action each year that reminded him that winter wasn't forever. Summer would come. He'd sit outside on the balcony, with a book and a coffee - without freezing his toes off. Soon. And it would start with these spring evenings: One of these that lures out with green meadows and a still setting sun at a late hour. And it promises that summer is here, it's not cold anymore, that coat is not needed. And when you actually leave the house, you realize that it's freezing.

Marco had made that mistake and came back to his room, from a walk with Pops and Stefan, chilled to the bones.

Ace, bundled up in the thick jumper he had worn for the whole winter, grinned at him knowingly from where he sat on Marco's bed with his laptop.

"Next time I fight a jacket and a hat over Luffy's head, you should stand next in line."

Marco dropped down next to him and slung the comforter over his head. "How do you never get cold? How is it possible?"

"I'm very hot," Ace said and grinned like a Cheshire cat.

Marco shivered and huddled the comforter around himself tighter.

Ace had started to spend some evenings with Marco, instead of out, doing whatever he was doing. Or whom. Marco still hadn't talked to him about that.

He also claimed that the WLAN was better in Marco's room, and it slowly became a habit for them to smoke Ace's evening blunt together and watch shitty shows, or nature documentation on the occasions that Luffy joined them.

It was also slowly becoming Marco's favorite part of the day. When after hours of failing miserably at stopping Pop's alcohol intake, and doctoring up the injuries of the different divisions, he could just relax and laugh at Ace's comments on different sea creatures.

"Look at that bitch! It's uglier than the inside of its own ass. This thing straight up looks like if Gollum snorted coke from a demon's belly-button and stayed awake, till he became one with his surroundings."

"I have never seen anything like that. What the fuck is that? Are we sure Chernobyl didn't have something to do with that? Its eyes are so far apart Columbus would have had to start a great fucking voyage to discover the second one."

"Now that's just Edvard Munch's The Scream cosplay gone wrong."

"Pokémon. There are fucking Pokémon living in the sea. If you try to swim there now, Luffy, I will skin you alive."

On that evening, they had only just started their episode, and Marco was still cold when Ace dropped off, joint still between his lips.

"Ace," Marco whispered softly and plucked the joint out of his mouth. "Ace, you need to get up again."

Ace grumbled in annoyance and turned to Marco to drag the comforter over his body. He was warm and hummed lightly as he slung the blanket around himself.

"You' comfortable?" Marco asked sarcastically and didn't even get an answer anymore. "At least get out of the jumper."

"Too tired," Ace mumbled and started to snore.

That night wasn't the night where Marco arranged Ace to his liking, but it surely was the first night, where it happened to Marco, when Luffy, an hour later, threw open the door with a loud bang, then whispered: "Is Ace here?" To then climb into the bed as well, on Marco's other side. Marco awoke the next morning, with one knee in his back, and an elbow in his face, and couldn't remember the last time he had slept that well.

* * *

Ace, in his arms, turns, while Marco lays on his back. They have danced this dance so often, it's still muscle memory. It's riding a bicycle for the first time in years. It's easy.

Ace lies half on top of him, and - Jesus, he is bigger now.

"You weigh a ton."

"Am I too heavy now?"

Ace is afraid.

"No, of course not," Marco lies.

"Good," Ace sighs into his neck and nuzzles into it. Drags his nose over Marco's Adam's apple four times, exactly how he used to.

His right hand finds Marco's. They used to be obsessed with the hands of each other. Marco almost forgot that.

Slinging his fingers around Ace's feels different, now that Ace's little finger isn't there. It's still like coming home. He has a Pavlovian response of deep relaxation as soon as Ace's other hand finds its way under his shirt and onto his chest, onto his tattoo. Ace's thumb strokes its one circle around it and then comes to rest, as does Marco's heart.

The last step in their dance. Marco puts his other hand in Ace's hair for a tiny caress, to then, softly, guide his face up. Ace stretches. Stretches up Marco's body, until they are almost face to face, mouth to mouth, and there - their choreography comes to a slithering hold when they both realize what just almost happened. Marco drags his head to the side and closes his eyes, to not watch Ace win the tiny bit of distance back, as he settles against Marco's chest again.

Fuck, Marco thinks. Fuck. Just fuck.

Still, his second hand finds where it's supposed to go, on Ace's lower back, and Ace murmurs, "stay over my jumper, please."

And those are the last words that they speak.

The last time Ace made sure that his jumper stayed on, it was to hide a secret. Now it's just to keep them in reality, Marco supposes. That's good, isn't it? A good choice.

Tomorrow nothing of this will have happened. It will expose this as a dream that has long been forgotten. Nothing but a tiny hint, the relics of who they once were. Tomorrow this will have been little more but imagination. Tomorrow they will both be sober, and Marco will be mad, but tonight he doesn't think he would have cared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a little illustration for the story, it's Marco's balcony vision


	13. Gremlins and the Matrix-Incident

Ace has let himself fantasize about waking up in Marco's arms again often in the last years.

It's so much more than he remembers.

It's warm breath in his hair, a heartbeat under his ear, it's an arm thrown around his shoulder and legs tangled with his.

Ace has a thing for taller men, and even though he grew a cm and gained muscles since he last lay with him, it's the same feeling of protection to have 2,3 m meters high Marco wrapped around him.

Marco must have turned them to their sides during the night, but he kept his arms around Ace. Either he was actually so drunk he didn't wake up, as he usually does a few times per night, or he made the conscious decision to keep Ace close. Ace wills his heart to not beat faster just thinking about that possibility.

Marco wasn't himself yesterday. For once, he wasn't mad at Ace. He was looking for comfort, no matter where it came from. Ace has to be realistic about this. Marco is a married man, and Ace is just the asshole who hurt and left him but still has this level of intimacy with him that words and time couldn't strip away.

Ace pushes his nose into Marco's neck. It is his forever favorite place in this world, and he breathes him in. Marco smells more intense like home than even this house or Pops. He is home on a Luffy level.

Ace's hand strokes over Marco's chest. He can't feel the ink that marks Marco as a half to Ace's whole and vice versa, but he knows it's there (he hopes it’s still there,) and nothing has been as comforting or as haunting during his time away.

He contemplates giving in and pressing a kiss to Marco's collarbone, when suddenly a hand snaps up and wraps its fingers around Ace's on Marco's chest, in a grip that leaves Marco with white knuckles. Marco pushes Ace's hand away with so much force that Ace's whole body rolls away from him.

Marco's eyes find Ace's in cold anger.

It's better than the lifeless gaze in front of a headstone. But only just.

Marco sits up, facing the blanket they are lying under, to not have to look at Ace and gruffs out of clenched teeth, "get the fuck out of my room!"

Ace can't have his heart sink at this. He is not allowed to feel disappointed. If Marco is mad at him, that's good. That means that Marco doesn't have time to be sad - that is the only way Ace knows how to help him at the moment.

But Ace never goes down without a fight. Ace doesn't run.

He sits up as well, keeps himself from reaching out, and says, "what kind of Gremlin in the rain version of 'good morning' is that?"

"Get out, Ace. Get out right now," Marco hisses with venom in his voice. Ace has rarely seen him this angry. He used to try to provoke this kind of emotion out of Marco and only got to this level of anger himself when he failed and failed.

"We will have to talk at some point."

Marco turns to him so fast he could have well-oiled ball-bearings for neck vertebras. "Get out before I do something I regret," he spits into Ace's face, and Ace doesn't flinch on the outside, but he can feel his guts tightening.

"So you would still regret it if you would kill me? Then things aren't as bad as I thought."

"No, I wouldn't. But I might regret it if I follow through with my plan to determinate your body's resonant frequency, then play flight of the fucking bumblebee on a flute to boil your organs inside out."

Marco hasn't lost his wit. That's good.

"You are so unmusical it would sound more like crash of the inebriated moth."

"It would kill you slow and painfully nonetheless and now get. The fuck. Out!"

It's so them to fight with the dumbest words they can come up with. It's so familiar, Ace forgets their timeline for a second and wants to laugh, like they used to. Because yes, they used to fight, but never to a point where they couldn't pause for a second to just be them again. Back then, there was never a doubt that a fight would break them apart. They were made for one another, and they would remain together no matter the struggle.

But it hasn't worked out like that, and now it feels like one wrong word could break their neck, that has only just regained its first string.

"Okay. Okay. I'm getting coffee. Do you want one, or anything else for that hangover? What do Gremlins like in these situations?"

Marco actually kicks him out of the bed.

"I take that as a no. Light really irritates your kind."

Marco throws his lighter at Ace, and when he blindly grabs an empty glass from the nightstand next, Ace flees the room as fast as he can.

He stands on the floor where Luffy has just left their old room, and they both cringe at the sound of glass breaking against the closed door behind Ace's back.

"That doesn't sound too good," Luffy points out.

Ace sighs. "Could have been better," he admits.

Luffy smiles and says, "but you did sleep with him, right?"

Luffy never changes. In some aspects he is still the innocent boy Ace tried to kill after they had just met - only to gain him as a brother and the first person to tell Ace that he was glad Ace existed.

Luffy doesn't want to know if they had sex, he just wants to know if Ace spent the night. It still sounds wrong to his ears when he says, "yes, I did."

"How did it go?"

Ace shrugs and moves towards the bathroom. "We were both drunk and sad. Great combination."

"Why were you sad?" Luffy asks in his Luffy kind of way.

Ace looks at him, gathers his thoughts, and says, "I was never brave enough to ask how he was doing while I was gone. How was he doing?"

Luffy gives him an exasperated look and says, "go ask him!"

Of course, Luffy would say that. And he is right to do so. Annoyed, Ace rolls his eyes at his brother and closes the bathroom door behind himself.

Holy shit, everything in there looks the same. Ace half expects to find his toothbrush next to Luffy's and Marco's in the blue cup by the sink, but of course, it isn't there. None of them are.

There also won't be a message for him, or a tic-tac-toe game, on the mirror if the humidity of the shower turns it foggy.

There are no shoes in front of the toilet. Marco hated that anyway.

Ace used to say how ‘it makes so much more sense to put your shoes on while peeing, it's time management, Marco, If I want to go out anyway I can just put them on then.’ And Luffy followed his example because of course, he would, and Marco would get mad at them and say in an annoyed voice how it would definitely take Ace less time to just take off his shoes by the door, like any other human being would, than cleaning the stairs, hallway and bathroom of the mud he brought in.

There had also been the ‘Matrix-incident’ as they called it afterward.

On that day, Ace - sixteen, dumb, and still not completely comfortable with the Whitebeards - sat on the closed toilet seat, in wet socks, a blood-soaked handkerchief pressed against the back of his head, while Marco shined a flashlight into his eyes.

"How did you manage to do that?" Marco asked, half impressed, half mad.

"I wanted to go to the toilet, but I had socks on, and the space right in front of the toilet was wet, from the shower-"

"-Because you refuse to dry yourself in the shower cabinet, as every other human being does, that also doesn't stash their shoes in the bathroom, and has conversations with their brother, while said brother is using the toilet."

"Whoah, you are seriously annoyed with my bathroom habits."

"I'm annoyed with head wounds at ten in the evening. How did this happen??"

"I was about to - yeah, okay." Marco glared at Ace, so Ace kept on going without protest. "I thought if I would stay close to the wall and just Matrix-move back down I-"

"-What the fuck is the Matrix-move?"

"You know when Nero, or Neo, or whatever dodges all these bullets and he goes like this -"

"Please don't do this, you probably have a concussion," Marco said, concerned, and stopped Ace's widespread arms in their motion.

"Well, I slipped in the water, miscalculated, and crashed against the toilet. I wouldn't have lived in the Matrix world."

"We are in the Matrix world," Marco murmured, paused, then shook his head. At his own comment, Ace hoped.

"So, you are telling me, there is a crack in the toilet because you Matrix-moved your head against it?"

"I Matrix-slipped."

"I'm gonna Matrix-eviscerate you."

Ace grinned at him.

"Do you feel dizzy? Nauseous? Do you remember everything that happened before the Matrix-Incident?"

"Honestly, I'm good. Mild headache, that's all."

"Your head needs stitches," Marco said, his fingers parting Ace's hair, at the back of his head.

Ace groaned. "Can you do it here? If I go to the hospital, my grandpa will be informed immediately."

Marco gave him a look, and a long-suffering sigh, then nodded.

"I will do it if you promise me to rest for the next week. Concussions are more dangerous than you might think. No going out, no drinking, no fights."

That was the first time that night, that Ace felt actual shock. That was worse than even his wet socks.

He couldn't stay inside for a week, he _needed_ to forget. There was nothing that could make him forget for more than a few hours. He needed his highs. He had been on his way to his date of the night because it was already getting too much again and his bones had felt on fire. His skin too tight.

"No. Absolutely not. I'm completely fine."

"Rest or hospital."

"You dictator! - Rest," Ace said, clearly unhappy.

"Wanna sleep at mine and watch Matrix? I have to wake you up every few hours anyway."

"Fine."

* * *

The crack is still in the toilet. Proof of Ace's existence here. Naming this the Matrix-incident hadn't been the best choice, Ace realizes now.

The Matrix-Incident with the true Matrix-move was the week that had followed after. Because by then, Ace was really spiraling.


	14. Secrets, snot, Socorro

A great many things had been wrong with Ace from the very start, that much had been clear. But the week when a concussed Ace had been ordered to rest and Marco had him under constant surveillance, he started to understand just how lost Ace actually was.

The first sign might have been Ace's panic when Marco told him that he wasn't allowed to smoke weed for the whole week.

"You know I wouldn't meddle, but I'm telling you this as your doctor," Marco said, in an effort to keep the peace between them.

"But I told you - I get sleep paralysis, night terrors. I will scream the whole street awake."

"No one here has to get up at seven - they won't care.

"Luffy has to. He has school tomorrow. It stresses him out, when he hears me, Marco - please. Just a quarter of what I usually smoke."

Marco shook his head apologetically.

"No playing around with concussions. You could risk brain damage."

Ace fiddled with the edges of the bandage around his head. He eradicated anxiety where before he had always tried to act cool. At least after overcoming his initial anger. But Marco knew that anger is born in fear.

"I'm gonna make you some camomile tea, that might help."

Ace scoffed.

That first night was bad. Ace tossed and turned so much that at two am Luffy, next to him, decided to leave for their bed in his and Ace's room.

When Ace finally managed to fall asleep, Marco timed the alarm clock for two hours later. When he woke Ace up, to make sure Ace was doing fine, not confused or nauseous, he only got a whine and a, "fuck off!" Then the tossing and turning started anew.

The next morning they were both grumpy and fed up with one another.

"You need a flat iron for the sleep wrinkles on your face," Ace threw at him, downing the decaf coffee that Marco had allowed.

"You need a bra for the bags under your eyes," Marco muttered back.

Marco left Ace in Pop's care and went for his daily duties and check-ups. Someone in Vista's division had managed to break their tailbone while playing catch with one of the raccoons. Marco, one day, would strap one of the raccoons to Thatch's head, as a revenge for the exotic pet phase.

He didn't have time to check on Ace until the evening.

Luffy was sitting with him on their bed, telling him in his vigorous way about his school adventures. "- and Zoro punched him on the nose! It was awesome!"

"Why didn't you punch him on the nose?"

"I was about to."

"Sure you were - if he gives you trouble again, I'm gonna come in and punch my fist through his skull."

"No fighting, for the week," Marco said, from the door and they both looked up at him.

"It wouldn't be a fight. It would be hunting a clown through his self-made circus."

"No hunting as well."

"Marco is dead set on being the Grinch, Luffy. Watch out for him," Ace told his brother.

"I'm dead set on making sure your brain stays intact."

"Bold of you to assume, it ever was."

Overall, Marco was surprised when Ace showed up in his room as he was about to go to bed. Ace had been annoyed with him, but maybe their little word-wars were exactly what he had needed.

"Can I sleep here again?" He asked, not looking at Marco.

Marco made space for him and Ace slipped in, his back to Marco and as always out of touching distance.

Marco awoke because he was hot. Way hotter than he usually got while sleeping. He tried to kick the blanket away but was met with an obstacle that turned out to be Ace's clammy legs.

Ace next to him was sweating through his jumper. A side effect of narcolepsy, as Marco knew. Ace whimpered in his sleep.

Marco was _really_ awake in an instance.

Night Sweats were only mildly uncomfortable, but if Ace was suffering through a nightmare or sleep paralysis, Marco would wake him immediately. His hair, in plastered strands over his forehead, covered most of his face but Marco could see how it was distorted in agony.

"Ace!"

Ace's whimpers turned into words. At first, Marco thought Ace might just be speaking unclear, but then he made out one of the only Portuguese words he knew.

"Socorro!"

Help.

"Ace," Marco said louder. "Wake up, it's only a dream." Ace started to shake, so Marco went to full on rattling him through. "You are safe. You just need to wake up. Come on. Ace!"

And suddenly, Ace was awake, sitting straight as a pole and screaming, "SABO!" His breath came out in panicked yelps and his shoulders were trembling.

"You are safe. Everything is alright - you are alright," Marco calmed him.

Ace's expression was hidden behind his hair, but the shaking subsided. When his breathing was calm enough for him to speak, he whispered, "I need my brother."

And without sparring Marco a glance he left, leaving behind only the aura of distress.

Marco didn't expect him to come back but only a minute later, he reappeared in the doorway, holding up a half-asleep Luffy.

Ace lay down next to Marco again, Luffy in his arms, disregarding their usual thirty cm of distance between them, so Marco threw his arm around both of them. He didn't know why Ace allowed him to be a source of comfort, but he cherished it. Ace was a bit like a wild animal that let himself be cuddled while being injured to disappear back into the wild when fully restored.

Ace leaned heavier against him and simultaneously pressed Luffy closer to himself. He kissed his brother's forehead and nose, cuddled him closer, way more affectionate than he would ever allow himself to be, during day time.

"Did you dream of Sabo?" Luffy whispered, his cheek against Ace's chin.

"Yeah," Ace murmured back.

"Don't worry, Ace. We are stronger now."

"I know. Sleep. You have school tomorrow."

"Goodnight, Ace and Marco," he yawned and was asleep in an instance.

Marco was about to fall asleep as well when Ace spoke up. "I'm sorry about that. This is the second night that you don't get to sleep because I am a Matrix-noob, without Matrix-moves."

Marco didn't know what a 'noob' was, but he could guess that it wasn't anything positive. "Don't worry. To be honest, I sleep better with someone next to me than alone."

"I get that," Ace whispered into Luffy's hair and buried his face in it.

Sleep found Marco shortly after, while Ace seemed to still be wide awake.

The week didn't get better.

Ace was movement, Ace was the bigger potential in every moment, Ace was passion. Ace was a force - that had been stopped.

He became apathetic.

Not being allowed to leave Moby Street, he spent most of his time in bed, staring at the wall, until Luffy came back from school and dragged him out of his mood.

The evenings were worse.

After Ace managed to get Luffy to sleep, he'd sit outside, still just in his jumper, under the cherry tree, listening to angry music with closed eyes and when Marco came to collect him, he was shaking lightly, holding a cigarette in hand that he wasn't allowed to smoke if he didn't want Marco to send him straight to the hospital and his grandfather.

The nights were sheer horror.

Marco conditioned himself fast to wake up if Ace's breathing pattern changed, while he slipped into sleep paralysis. But even with Marco waking him up as soon as he could, the damage was already done. Ace's distress grew with every night, as did the number of his narcolepsy attacks during the day.

On the fifth day, Marco didn't know anymore if what he was doing was correct. The concussion didn't seem to trouble Ace much, but being trapped in the house without his usual coping mechanisms sure did. But if he would let Ace run supreme again, his habits of smoking, drinking, and fighting could worsen the concussion.

Marco didn't think that Ace had slept at all, last night.

At that point the whole Whitebeard family was worried. Especially, after Ace had been too tired to make a joke about people asking him what he had done to his head, when before he answered in true Ace manner:

"I tried to escape the Matrix."

"I slipped on banana peel."

"I was first in the race to become the new god of war and Ares didn't like it, so he sent a blue Mario Kart shell."

It all spiraled down to a sad climax on that evening.

Marco observed Ace, sitting outside under the cherry tree, from the kitchen window where he was sitting with Pops to discuss their troublesome protege.

"I don't think we are doing him a favor with this anymore," Marco mused.

Pop's, as ever unconcerned, grinned lightly. "I think this is a good exercise for him. Ace has been on the run for quite some time. It can be as exhausting as finally coming to terms with whatever haunts him."

Marco felt his heart twitch uncomfortably. "He is so young. Life dealt him some shitty cards, with the narcolepsy and whatever else he is going through."

"There is a lot of pain in him. You are right - but dare I remind you of a depressed fourteen years old that turned out just fine?"

Marco gave his father a smile. He had been close to Ace's age when he had had his first episode of feeling lost and alone in life.

Outside, a flame ignited and went out again so fast Marco almost missed it - Ace was probably burning leaves, or whatever he found in his pockets again.

Pops said, "You were always good at saving those in need, son. I give Ace into your care. I know you will do him justice."

Marco gave his father a serious nod, then left to get Ace out of the freezing spring weather. It was time to actually talk to him.

When he came into view of the cherry tree, Ace quickly let the lighter disappear, straightened, and started to hastily wipe at his eyes.

"It's alright to cry, Ace."

"I never see you crying - seriously. When did you last cry?"

Marco had wanted to have this heart to heart but trust Ace to make him fight and sacrifice for this.

"When Haruta moved out," he admitted begrudgingly. "I was always a caregiver. But then the last of my little siblings moved out and I didn't know anymore what I was. I care for Pops, but that's different."

Ace was still wiping at his eyes and making a horrible mess of his face.

"And then we came along and you remembered again?" He asked and there was a bit of hostility in his voice that Marco thought he had forgotten on his way since he had started living with them.

"I do want to take care of you. So let me. Allow yourself to be taken care of."

Ace turns his sadness into anger. Marco understood that about Ace then. He can work with anger, turn it into energy. But sadness just brings lethargy. "I don't need others taking care of me!"

Marco sat down next to him. Looked calmly into his red and blotchy face. Tears in his eyes, snot half on the way out of his nose. Ace was the messiest crier he has ever witnessed.

Softly he dragged some lost strands of Ace hair back, etched closer, and kissed his forehead. A bold move, but maybe Ace just needed a bit of softness to give some of his own up as well.

"That doesn't mean that you can't accept when someone is offering."

And Ace's hands that had been about to push him away got lost in their actions, got tangled with Marco’s jacket, and ended up dragging him closer. In. "I just want you to be alright," Marco murmured into Ace's hair, as he burrowed himself into Marco’s chest to spread his snot there.

"Marco," Ace sobbed.

"Marco."

Marco dragged him in tighter.

"Sometimes," Ace whimpered. Loudly sucked snot back up his nose. "Sometimes it feels like my blood, or my shadow, or - I don't fucking know - is out to get me. And then I just want to forget. I need to forget because I can't go back. And nothing can get better, I can only start to not think so frequently, so it's better to just not start to at all, but then I can't do anything else. And I have to forget. But to forget I have to chase some endorphin high, but the fucking tragedy for everyone who ever got high is that you have to come down again. I can't stay high up. You have to constantly higher the dosage to feel fortunate." And at that, he lost it and just cried.

Marco didn't get half of that at the time.

"Also the world is fucked and we live in an oligopoly Klepto Plutocracy, apparently."

"What does that even mean?" asked Marco.

"I don't know, I just read it online. Probably, just that America is more like three companies in a trench coat than a country."

Marco snickered at that and Ace fought a tiny laugh out of his exhausted body.

They gave themselves a moment to just be. Slung around one another, until Marco pulled his arms away, to be able to look at Ace's face.

"I don't know what is wrong, exactly - that's fine. I don't have to know. But I am here for you. We all are. You and Luffy belong to us now - and we never leave our own behind. Whenever you are ready to talk to me or ask for support in whatever way you need - I will make sure that you get it. Alright? You are not alone."

Ace hadn't stopped his behavior that day, or the next. Ace was still spiraling, but he told Marco afterward that that was the moment where he started to truly accept Marco as a friend.


	15. A question never asked

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Mentions of violence and discussion of character deaths

Marco didn't expect it to feel so good to throw Ace out.

Feeling good hasn't happened in days, but Ace still has the ability to get deeper under his skin. He is a splinter that at first doesn't seem so bad; it is only after a while that the pain spreads in waves and by then it's already deep under there.

Sometimes pain is better than nothing.

Marco's head pounds - he hasn't had a hangover of this caliber in years. It's a good enough excuse for last night, he muses. He had been too drunk to make decisions that could be classified as good by even the most benevolent of people.

Letting Ace sleep in his arms and enjoying it was probably in the top three of the biggest mistakes Marco made while not being sober. Right after the night in his college days, all culprits promised to never lose a single word about.

The focus, though, isn't on letting Ace do whatever Ace sees fit because - honestly - Marco doesn't care anymore, but the part where Marco enjoyed himself too much.

He thought the night wouldn't matter in the morning.

It does. It really fucking does.

It felt good to have Ace back in his arms, and it felt good to kick him out.

How does Ace still manage to have this impact on his emotions? Marco has no idea what he feels anymore unless it's being mad at Ace. And being justified with his anger when it comes to interacting with him. This feeling is familiar and easy to dissect. The rest is just one big kaleidoscope vortex of denial. He hates Ace, and he loves Ace, but that's not important because mostly he is furious. Ace taught him how to work with that.

He gets up energetically - and regrets it right the next second as the room goes blurry, and he drops back down to the bed for a second. The next try is more successful, and he makes his way to the bathroom and then the kitchen, where he can already hear animated voices and smell coffee.

Ace sits opposite Pops, Blamenco, and Namur at the kitchen table, right on the seat he usually occupied, with Luffy to his left, Marco to his right, and Stefan to his feet. But Marco's usual seat is occupied.

Monkey D. Garp has his hand wrapped around his coffee mug as tightly as if it was about to run from him. He is looking at his grandkids next to him with a disturbingly stern frown. Marco hasn't seen Garp in years, he hasn't changed at all.

They all look up when Marco enters.

"Good morning," Namur says with a sunny smile. Bastard doesn't get hangovers.

"Maaarcoo," Luffy grins at him, bright as ever. Bastards. All bastards. Pops nods at him.

Ace doesn't say anything, but Marco can feel his eyes in his back as he turns around to make himself a cup of coffee.

"Talk, old man," Ace says to his grandpa.

"When I finished my coffee, brat."

Marco sits down at the head of the table, with his hands around the coffee as a barrier between himself and the room. Stefan comes over to him for some head scratches. Pop's eyes are on Marco, so he keeps still, after patting Stefan down, to be as uninteresting as possible and have something else grab his father's attention so that he can be left in peace.

Ace is good at getting attention. He doesn't do it on purpose, but he also has no idea of how he comes across, usually. "It's not ‘burn your tongue hot’, you can chug it, if you want to - this is important. Tell me!" Ace demands.

Garp brings the mug to his mouth with a violence only seen in college kids drinking their first beer on ex.

"Shiryu is dead."

Ace doesn't seem relieved. His eyebrows are still and intense, his gaze stays on his grandfather.

"Deuce. How is Deuce?"

Garp takes another sip of his coffee, while Ace sits so straight on his chair, it stresses Marco out just watching.

"He is alive."

"What are you not telling me?"

"He wasn't in too good shape. He is in hospital. Unconscious. He will be fine."

Ace sacks back down, staring at the table in a gaze that everyone in this room wishes they wouldn't know so well, Marco is sure of it.

It speaks of self-loathing. Of not only pain but guilt.

Marco saw it too often when Ace had been young. Usually followed by words like 'I don't deserve', or 'I'm not worth'. When Ace torments himself in his mind, he starts to chew on the insides of his cheeks. Marco sees his jaw furiously going to town now. This would be Marco's time to sweep in and save him from his mind, but he doesn't have the energy, nor the will. Blamenco looks at Marco in a way that seems to demand him to do his old job, while Garp stares at him taxing.

Luffy lays his hand on Ace's arm and says, "Deuce will be so proud of himself that he did it when he wakes up," and grins his grin at his big brother.

Surprisingly, it's enough to drag Ace out of it. He blinks himself free of his thoughts and gives his brother the warm for-Luffy-smile. "You are right. It's good news."

Maybe this Deuce guy isn't all that important to Ace in the end. Why do his cramped intestines relax at that?

"How is the situation in Impel Down now, Garp?" Pops asks.

"The little riot is over. Shiryu and two of Blackbeard's associates are dead. Six people, including Deuce, are injured severely. Four of them are Whitebeard associates. They protected Deuce from his attackers."

"Will they be alright? Do you know the division they were in before they went to jail? Or names?" Namur asks, concerned.

"I just know what I told you. Akainu and Smoker will know more. He wants to talk to you again, Ace."

Marco thinks that a great many pieces of information were just given to him that he could be hung up on, but no - the interesting part to his brain is Ace interacting with Smoker again. He hated that back then, and he hates it now.

"I'd like a word with Marco alone, now," Garp says, and the others turn quiet.

Marco's name does that these days.

"Don't give me that look, Ace. And don't talk to your brother in eyebrow code." Garp orders his grandson after a moment of loaded silence.

"Eyebrow what now?"

"Don't you think I know your tricks?"

"Luffy and I aren't mind-melted, and we definitely don't have an eyebrow code."

"So it doesn't mean anything when your left eyebrow twitches twice?"

"It means Grandpa looks like a slightly melted wax-statue of himself from ten years ago. Built by someone who has never seen a human, besides of like - the Lazy-Town cast," Ace says and twitches twice, facing their round and Luffy, Blamenco, Namur, and even Pops snicker and twitch back.

Marco wonders how Ace seems to form and hold deeper connections to the people he meets than Marco manages to have while constantly being around said people.

"Let's start to clean the living room," Namur says, and they leave. Pops gives his shoulder a light tug before he gets up as well, followed closely by Stefan.

When it's only Garp and Marco left, Marco feels oddly like being on display. He keeps his face still and holds the coffee he doesn't drink in front of him like a shield.

"I told Ace I'd talk to you if he wouldn't."

Marco still doesn't want to move. "He tried to, this morning - I kicked him out of my room and threw a glass after him."

After he spent the whole night breathing into his hair and reveling in the feeling of Ace's weight on top of him.

Garp gives him a look, and Marco wishes people would stop with the endless understanding mimic, the head nodding, and the suffering in their features. The tiptoeing around issues to just not hurt him. Garp isn't one to do that naturally.

"I understand that seeing him again - right now - must be intense. A lot of things happening at once..."

The elephant in the room is small, so small it would have fit in Marco's waiting arms perfectly, and yet it's so gigantic it is taking Marco's breath away under its weight.

"It's very Ace," he spits, "to come back exactly now."

"Ace didn't have much of a choice. He had to come back. He wanted to have someone else tell you to grab your wife and child and leave the country, but things always turn out different. I know that very well."

Marco doesn't say anything. Garp also had different plans for his family, and that it didn't work out brought Ace and Luffy right onto Marco's path. At least for Luffy he can be grateful.

"Ace hurt you. Ace can be an inconsiderate bastard when he gets lost. You and I know how he is and why. But it's time to forget about that. At least it's time for a truce, because the storm that has been brewing for six years is finally here."

And suddenly, there is another dead person elephant in the room. The catalyst for too much sadness. A death in the family took Ace from him. Another brought him back.

Marco should have puked yesterday night.

Ace would have told him to leave with his own, self-made little family. Ace would have given him his chance at happiness. Fuck Garp, for making him less angry at Ace, when he needs it as his fuel. Also, fuck Ace for not telling him this version.

"You need to know what happened and what is to come. And Ace deserves a chance to talk to you. So do it."

Garp can be as blunt as Ace, and Marco appreciates it more than the understanding and the feeling themselves around issues.

Ace is the easier issue to tackle - things change so fucking fast.

The first time Garp and Marco met, it had been the same. Garp was blunt and honest in a way that did remind Marco of Ace.

It had been a warm spring morning when Ace was sixteen, and Marco had sat on the sofa in the living room, reading the newspaper and drinking his coffee. Pops hat sat across from him drinking his coffee with more amaretto than water, silently observing Ace, knocked out in a narcolepsy attack. He was lying on the sofa, next to Marco, his head resting on one of Marco's jacket, and drooling a tiny puddle onto it.

It was shortly after the Matrix-Incident and its aftermath, and Ace's body was still readjusting, which meant more narcolepsy attacks than usual.

Marco had - begrudgingly - given Ace all of his freedom back, and he was back to smoking, coming home with bloody knuckles, different purses, smelling like sex, or alcohol, or both.

But he was also spending a lot of time with Marco that he seemed to genuinely enjoy. He laughed a lot when they were together, they joked mindlessly about almost everything, had their sparring matches, and some gym hours.

Ace spent every night with Marco because Marco was awake in seconds when Ace's breathing pattern changed, and he slipped into sleep paralysis, where Luffy just slept through. Marco liked helping and supporting him in whatever way Ace let him, and it felt like they were slowly, slowly, getting somewhere.

Nonetheless, it was quite alarming when Fossa came in to announce that Chief of Police Monkey D. Garp was standing on their veranda.

Pops laughed and told Fossa to invite him in, and one minute later, a man with a grin as confident as Pop's own, entered their living room. Unconcerned with his grandson using the Commander of the first division's jacket, stilted with the Whitebeard cross, as a pillow, he shook Pop's hand. "Whitebeard, it's true what they say. You are finally getting old."

Pops laughed. "I understand why you aged so early, Garp. Your grandchildren are a handful."

And just like that, all eyes were on Ace and Marco, who decided to play it cool and continue to drink his coffee unconcerned, while Ace's puddle of drool turned into a mini lake.

"So they did make it here, that's good."

Aaand enough of playing cool. "You weren't even sure they were here? You didn't know, or check up on that until now?" Marco asked, appalled, but Garp laughed.

"I know my grandsons. If they wouldn't have been here, I would have heard from them sooner - you kept them in check alright. I'm still here because of Ace's illegal doings, Whitebeard."

He sat down across from Pops, not even sparring Ace another glance. Seemed like Ace had been right and this man wasn't completely sane. He didn't seem to want to actually talk or even look at Ace.

"I have lots of complaints about Ace in the office. I had a hunch for a while now, but yesterday a security camera got a shot of his face, as he was running from his little crime scene. It's happening in the territory you are claiming to be a protector of, Whitebeard. The department already thinks it's a violation against the contract. Akainu is breathing down my neck. If they manage to trace this back here, we all are in deep trouble."

Pops was silent for a second, still looking at Ace who's lake of drool was turning into a tiny ocean.

"We can talk to him about stealing, but I don't know if we can change something yet. He trusts Marco with a lot of things, but we still don't know what brought him and Luffy here."

"Stealing?" Garp asked. "I was talking about the fires he started."

"Fires? We don't know anything about fires," Pops answered and laughed wholeheartedly. His unfathomable eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled down at Ace. "Ace is an energetic young man with a head of his own."

"He is destructive and thinks he is all alone, yes. I know what you mean."

Marco didn't know if he liked the way Garp spoke about Ace.

"Why did you send them here?" he asked, and his hand automatically found its way onto Ace's head in protection. Ace started to snore lightly.

"I didn't. It was Ace's decision to leave Brazil. He took Luffy because he doesn't trust anyone else to take care of him."

Finally, Garp did send a look over to Ace. His eyes held sadness, demoralization, but also determination.

"Ace left because he is looking for the answer to a question. It is not my place to tell you this question, but I thought that he might finally find what he is looking for here. It was that or seeing him lose the fight he is fighting against himself. So I gave a nudge in the right direction."

Marco doesn't like this. It sounds like they are some last hope kind of thing.

Garp left shortly after, and Marco never found out what that question was and if Ace ever found an answer to it.

* * *

What had that question been? It used to be on Marco's mind a lot after Garp talked about it, but over the years he forgot. Ace hasn't been looking for answers anymore for a long time. He is looking for Blackbeard and his associates. But when are things ever that easy?

"Yeah," Marco hears himself say. "I'm gonna talk to him. Thatch would have wanted that, I think."


	16. Ace's story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea how grammar and syntax work, I don't know how you make a new paragraph in a monologue while the same person is continuing speaking. Ace is talking a lot here and when I wanted to break it up I didn't put " at the end of his sentences? I think I've seen it done this way, I don't know. Just as a heads up.  
> (If someone is cleverer than me and would like to share their knowledge on how its done correctly plllease tell me in the comments, I don't wanna die dumb)
> 
> Warnings: Mentioning of violence, character death. The usual.

Ace doesn't hear Marco enter the living room.

Ace is standing on top of the living room table, with Luffy on his shoulders. Why are the ceilings so damn high? Oh yeah, because everyone living here is as tall as Akainu's bastard energy.

Luffy is fishing for someone's shoe that had been thrown onto the ceiling fan, and Namur is totally against just starting the damn thing because they wouldn't know where the shoe would land. Ace thinks he is full of shit and just wants to see Luffy’s and Ace's death in an act of acrobatics.

Luffy turns, which almost throws them off balance, and yells, "Marco, I hope Gramps didn't hit you!"

Ace turns around completely and stares at Marco, who looks back at him.

Ace doesn't know what Grandpa and Marco were talking about, but he looks more disheveled than even pre-coffee Marco did.

They regard one another in silence, while Luffy still tries to get the shoe, Namur cleans the same spot on the ground six more times, and Blamenco stops in his tracks of collecting beer-drenched Magic-cards. (Who brings Magic-cards to a mafia party?)

Aware of their audience, Marco just gives Ace a tiny nod in the direction of the garden. Ace, unceremoniously, drops Luffy without ever breaking eye contact with Marco and follows him out of the door.

Luffy complains loudly, but when Ace closes the garden door behind them, he is silenced and he is all alone with Marco.

Ace loves the garden. The pond, Haruta's small herb beds, the cherry tree with the spider swing, and the big meadow they played football on. Marco, Luffy, Thatch, Namur, and him against Fossa, Haruta, Izou, Josu, and Atmos.

Their team had lost two members in one day when he left. Ace wonders if they played in that year.

Marco and he go over to the cherry tree without having to talk about it. It's one of their spots. They drop down in the spider swing. Ace didn't bring his coat, but he was never that bothered by cold weather anyways. Marco is though, and he is only wearing a thin jacket, so maybe this won't be too long of a talk.

Marco takes out a pack of cigarettes and offers one to Ace.

Ace accepts after a second of hesitation. "I don't smoke anymore," he says, lighting up the cigarette with his lighter.

"Same," Marco says and does the same with his.

Ace gazes at him as Marco smokes. He does it with an odd grace that Ace never learned how to mimic.

"And? Did Gramps hit you?" He asks carefully.

"With some truths, yes."

Oh, God. What could he have said?

Oh no. No.

Actually, No - Gramps wouldn't tell Marco about, for example, the night Ace left and the state he was in when he arrived at Garp's place. He wouldn't do that. But then..?

"What do you mean?"

"You said something along the lines of you came back to make sure I was ok - Garp just told me you planned to come back and get me out of the country with my wife and my child."

Marco says it neutral, but Ace feels caught. It wasn't a full-on lie - he really wanted to make sure that Marco was alright.

He takes another drag of his cigarette to win some time. "That was the plan, yes," he admits. "At the time, I didn't feel like seeing me again would be...beneficial for you."

"But now you do? My child dies, and you think that's that big of a game-changer?"

"Isn't it?" Ace whispers.

Marco shakes his head, not in a 'no' but in an 'I can't believe you' kind of way.

It's not the time for this, but Marco is so unbelievably beautiful at this moment. Orbiting in his calm aura doesn't feel peaceful anymore, more like the silence before a storm, and it's incredibly alluring.

"Last night wouldn't have happened if it wouldn't have been a game-changer," Ace presses on.

Marco looks up into his face at that. "And where do you categorize this morning in?"

Ace wants to make a joke about it, but he also doesn't want Marco throwing things at him again, so he stays silent.

Marco sighs out smoke, and they stare after the disappearing clouds.

"I won't apologize for this morning," Marco declares.

"I didn't expect you to. I want to say thank you, though. For last night."

"Yeah, would be easier now if I would have done it for you."

Ace wishes he could hold Marco's hand again. Or touch him in any way. They used to be that kind of couple that was touching at any given second. He misses them.

Marco falls back on the spider swing. Ace topples them forward with his foot and thinks of summers they spent here, lying together. Marco reading about whatever caught his interest, and he needed to know right _then and there,_ and Ace napping, or just telling Marco about his day before he was off again to do whatever. He always knew that Marco would be here if Ace needed a place to rest. His rock in turbulent waters.

After a while, Marco says, "I never asked what you were doing. I didn't want to know, but now I think I have to."

Talking is good. It's easier for Ace than silence. But he doesn't know where to start. "Well, what do you know?" He asks.

"You left."

It hurts. But it's the truth and the truth should always be acceptable. "You know about the gasoline scheme?"

"Thatch made it up and consulted Teach about it. You overheard. Teach killed Thatch so that he could steal the idea, not knowing that you knew about it. You thought it was your fault, and you swore revenge. I don't know how exactly the scheme was supposed to work."

On that evening, Marco had slept at Haruta's place because she was in a stressful situation and not doing too well. Luffy slept at Zoro's, and Ace didn't like sleeping alone, so he opted for the couch in the living room where he didn't feel so isolated. He listened in on Thatch and Teach on accident when they talked in the kitchen. He didn't know how important that accident would be for the future.

The gasoline scheme was playful, cocky, and brilliant - just like its maker.

"Okay, so gasoline is owned by the big companies, right? Like Shell and BP. They sell gasoline to distributors, and those sell to gas stations. And for every gallon of gasoline, the state gets paid taxes from the distributors. In turn, they get a 'Tax paid' stamp. The distributors sell their brought gasoline for higher to the gas stations to get the tax money back in. Thatch owned independent gas stations - he knew this, and it got him thinking: What if you could get the 'Tax paid' stamp without actually paying for the Tax? And this is the gasoline scheme: Make up fake Shell companies. Buy a lot of gasoline. Fake license companies that can produce your 'I paid Tax' stamps. Do not pay Tax. Sell to independent gas stations, preferably stations that you own. By the time the tax inspectors start to investigate, you just vanish your fake company and open another one. And you can sell your gasoline for a lower price because you don't have to bring in the money the state took from you with the taxes. Everyone wins. Well, everyone but the government."

"Thatch came up with that?" Marco asks with a nostalgic smile. "It sounds super risky and damn clever."

"I wish he could have seen it working. He would have laughed himself sick. Blackbeard made millions every week with it." Ace tries for a smile too, but he knows it must look pained. So he moves on.

"Blackbeard knew right away that it had the potential to work. And to steal the idea - well..."

He can't say it. They both know what happened. How that night ended. Thatch ended. And Ace and Marco too.

He takes a deep breath and moves on. Away from that sadness that's creeping in. "I went undercover. I knew that just exposing the scheme wouldn't bring me his head, so I became a member of the crew he was assembling."

"How? I mean - he knows you. How did you find him?"

"At first, I waited. Smoker and my Grandfather worked on it, getting informants into the areas and groups we expected Blackbeard would try to recruit. I left for Caracas. Teach spoke to me about it once. How he had his roots there - and I was partially right. We learned from informants in the Contrera-Caruana Mafia Clan that he was gathering resources there. But Caracas is the last place the gasoline scheme would work in, so we were just waiting for Blackbeard to head out.

"I couldn't get too close to him, because he would recognize me, and I didn't know his exact location - he was working from the background. I needed to keep my low profile.

"Europe was a strong contender, because of their high gasoline taxes, so we searched for gasoline being sold lower than average to independently owned gas stations. We found him in Andalusia.

"So I got in - started small and slowly worked myself up. I became a gas station attendant in a small, independently owned station there."

Marco smiles at that.

"I needed access to the higher ranks. The people faking the government licenses, the group buying the gasoline, and so on. It takes a lot of people to orchestrate a scheme this big."

"How did you know he wasn't on to you?"

"Mostly I reminded myself that he didn't know anyone knew about his plans. I could never be sure, but I guess that kept me on my toes.

"I managed to become friendly with the guy who supervised the gas station, convinced him I was trustworthy and that I'd love to become a member of the Blackbeard Mafia."

He still feels bitter about this. How long he had to pretend. He never expected this to take six years.

"This dude was running some nightclubs, so I slowly got myself in there as well. After a year and a bit, I finally managed to meet the one in charge of the drugs BlackBeard sold in these clubs - a guy named Doc Q.

"Doc Q had to be high up, I thought my chances were good that he knew where Teach actually was. He wasn't one to talk, though. I wasted months on that. And all I got out of that looking like a too hard squeezed stress ball alcoholic fuck were his deep dark incel thoughts. So I needed access to his computer. It took another few months to have an opportunity. And just when I wanted to break into his fucking empty-alcohol-bottle-vitrine, mattress-on-the-floor, stale-air-apartment someone else does it and gets fucking shot.

"And that was Deuce. I got him out of there somehow. He had the laptop and I had just saved his life, so I thought we might be on the same page. Turns out Deuce was onto Blackbeard as well because...I guess that's his story to tell.

"We came back here with the laptop. Grandpa's team hacked it and we discovered contacts and IP-addresses that let us to locations in Cambogia: We had their drug team, so we left for Cambogia and managed to get ourselves in as a hired gun."

"But weren't they on to you? I mean you leave Andalusia the night the laptop gets stolen?"

"Nah, we weren't important enough. Just a gas station attendant. Not remarkable in any shape or form. Anyways - we worked on a ship, made sure that no rival gang made a move, would have been quite boring, really, but I met the dude who was in charge there, a guy called Van Augur - and we hit it fucking off. Dude thought I was hilarious and he wanted me in - like really in! He told me that the Blackbeard Mafia was 'opening the books', which meant that they were producing members as fast as like - Saruman making his fucking Orc army. They were looking for people for the gasoline scheme. It had survived its testing phase and they wanted to expand it. So I said, 'Hey, I conveniently understand all about how it could work and the trouble one could run in with it. And look - I speak English, and my IQ is above freezing. In celsius, nor Fahrenheit, mind you, but that's enough to be well suited for the job. Deuce stayed on the ship so that we could know what the fuck was going on there.

"And then I ended up in a fake license making company in Florida, where the gasoline scheme was booming. It worked so well it was ridiculous. And _there_ I found Laffitte!"

"That's the guy that was killed, right?"

"That's the guy that I killed, yes."

"You did it?"

Ace nods. "He was an asshole. I don't feel bad about it."

It's not a lie. It's not the truth either.

"Well, Laffitte was kind of an urban legend. Almost as far away as Blackbeard himself. His Liaison. Almost as untouchable. It was insane to finally be close enough."

"Wait, were you a made member at that point?"

"No," Ace says and topples them forward on the swing with pent up frustration that always rises when he thinks about that time. "Laffitte worked Intelligence and most people around me were made members. So I knew that shit was getting tight around me. I thought that they were onto me. I couldn't be traced back for more than two years - when I was hired on the ship. I thought that maybe Laffitte was getting me in close to make his mind up about me. And kill me if he had to. So I was sure my time was limited... It made me a little bit reckless.

"I got a surveillance device onto Laffitte. Risky fucking move, but I didn't have another choice. And at first, I thought it paid off. I managed to eavesdrop on a conversation that Laffitte had with Blackbeard. I got an address in Briston out of it. I contacted Deuce to go there, and when I didn't hear from him for a week, I decided that I had to go."

"And then you got captured by Laffitte?"

"Yes. He had been onto us for a while. He didn't know who Deuce and I were working for and he decided to keep us alive until we talked."

"Is that how you lost your finger?"

Ace nods and shudders, when the smell and the pictures of that incident come back up again in his mind.

Marco smokes his cigarette with the same old grace, but now there is a trace of anger in his smoke.

"Grandpa knew where I was going and when he didn't hear from me he sent people after us, but we had been transported to another place. Some village in Wales, no good food or weather, can't recommend it."

Marco doesn't laugh.

"And then Laffitte heard back from Blackbeard. Honestly, if that would have happened sooner, we would have been dead as fuck. Laffitte had sent him pictures of us and he recognized me. So that was when we were really, really fucked. I read the emails later and he was saying how 'I needed to be left alive', how 'I was perfect leverage', and how 'he could end Whitebeard with me'. We were so fucking lucky to be found by Smoker's unit at the right time."

"How?"

Ace laughs. "Bridgefy."

"Bridge what?"

"Deuce's phone is programmed to send out his location via Bridgefy in a set interval: It's a mesh networking app that operates on Bluetooth. You can send messages without internet: A message you want to send hops from a person that uses Bridefy, to the next person's phone that has Bridegfy, until it reaches its destination. The distance isn't great, but you can imagine it like a human chain that slowly gets a message across. Like the fires that are lit in Lord of the Rings to indicate that someone far away needs help."

Marco laughs at Ace's comparison. "Nothing new under the sun and at the same time whoa, the future is here."

Ace smiles back. It is cleansing to be able to just talk and laugh with Marco, even if it's only for a bit.

"What really saved our asses is that it works in airplane mode. So while our phones were confiscated and they tried to get data out of them, Deuce's phone searched for a way to get his message to my Grandfather - in a Welsh town with maybe 400 people living in it. So. It took a while. But it worked."

"Laffitte didn't see it coming?"

"He was busy with getting information out _of us_ , he didn't actually think we'd be dumb enough to have anything on our phones, so he didn't care much for them. He trusted his footmen to at least know how to put on airplane mode and disable the GPS, I guess.

"Smoker got our location. They sent a team, fucking chaos broke out. I killed Laffitte with the iron pole the bastard smashed my hand with."

Marco sits up, stubs his cigarette out on the swing’s grid, and gestures for Ace's hand. Ace gives it to him willingly. Marco inspects it, more with a doctor's curiosity than concern. "It healed well. Does it still hurt?"

"Sometimes. Mostly it's just uncomfortable to adapt to."

Marco tries to take his cold fingers under Ace's hand away. Ace doesn't let him.

"Teach is coming, Marco. And he is really fucking mad."

Marco looks at Ace's finger around his hand. "Do we have a plan?"

"We smoke him out. Laffitte is dead. Shiryu too. His drug and intelligence-gathering division lie in shambles," Ace continues. "The next thing will be exposing the gasoline scheme. We watch him lose everything he built up for himself in the last years. This house of cards is crumbling. He has to make a move now. And so do you." Ace says. "Can you be here and ready for him? With me? - I can't work against you. I can't have the past stand between us while this is happening. You can still leave if you would like that. I wouldn't hold it against you. But I really want your help with this."

Ace swallows.

"Can we do this together?"

Marco's fingers are cold in his.

"For Thatch?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo I was dreading this chapter because me and my Add brain can't. do. researchh. Just doesn't work. The gasoline scheme is a thing that existed, it worked. A mafia dude called michael franzese came up with it. There is a lot of information on it out there that I did not read, and I have no idea if any of that made any sense. I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't work in eruope. That it did work at the time was mostly because the dudes collecting the Tax didn't do it immediately for every bought gallon of gasoline. That slowed down the whole process of finding out that the Tax was not paid. By the time they did investigate it was easy to just tear down the fake shell companies they had set up in Panama and start anew. If someone out there is reading this and shaking their heads over this not being realistic, I'm sooorry, I tried my best


	17. Something between

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: A mafia house being absolutly clueless when it comes to judging what normal teenager behavior might look like and how to act responsibly when faced with its abnormality. They are trying, but they are dumb. Also alcohol, weed, discussion of underage, the usual

Marco can't believe his life turned around _again_ in just the span of a few days. Ace has that effect on him, and Marco maybe needs to be done with this feeling of void inside of him. A truce with Ace. Talking to Ace again. Hearing his bad jokes. It still feels like a dream or one of his imaginations.

They are both hyper-aware of the time that passed, he thinks, since they were close, but Marco has the feeling that that's mostly because it's insane to both of them how well they still function together.

Marco accepted the truce. He still has to let Ace's story go through his head a few times to understand it as reality, but he will get there.

Ace hated being alone more than anything growing up. He only did it when he wanted to lick a wound in peace - for Ace to go on this journey _alone_ was a big step but he went through so much traumatic shit, Marco wonders if Ace even thinks of it as a victory. He must, right? His grown-up version's smile is so much more honest. Is that in Marco's head?

Reality is changing so fast Marco has to catch his breath.

He felt the same when Ace was turning his life around in the first spring they knew each other. Ace made sure to wring excitement out of every second of his day, and it exposed the monotony of Marco's everyday life.

Not that being a member of the Whitebeard mafia could ever be boring, but a routine had sneaked in. Especially after the agreement with the cops came into play, and they left drug deals behind, which had become a nuisance anyway. It was business better suited for younger groups that weren't part of a Mob and couldn't be convicted as organized crime so easily.

Ace's disordered energy awoke Marco's caretaking tendencies. A match made in hell. And at the beginning of summer of that year, they were teased for it by about all of Marco's siblings.

"Oh look, it's team Marco-Polo."

"Excuse me? It's team Ace'n'Spades!" Ace answered Thatch, huffing, from Marco's and his joined morning run.

Marco entered the kitchen behind him, unbothered with the endless commentary of his siblings about their weird friendship. Ace was in need of someone who was there for him, and if he was honest: So was Marco. Not in need of a friend. But in need of being needed. Now that all of his siblings had stopped doing so. Only Haruta came to him for support, beyond division duties.

She was also the only one who seemed to not like Ace's relationship with Marco. She complained about Marco not having as much time for her as he used to have. It was probably true. Between his duties as a doctor, Commander of the First Division, and taking care of Ace as much as Ace would allow, some of his older priorities - like always being available - suffered. It couldn't be-

Ace threw an apple at him. "You again too deep in thoughts, Pineapplehead? Or are you having a near-death-experience after one more mile than usual?"

"Funny, seeing how you complained about feeling blood in your lungs only three minutes ago."

"I was only trying to create a platform where you could confess to _your_ body shutting down."

"My body is very much intact, even after this vicious attack." And he threw the apple back at Ace, hitting only his windbreaker jacket.

“You know what they say: An apple a day keeps the doctor away.”

“Yes, if you throw them at him!”

"No playing with food in my kitchen," Thatch shrieked and threw another apple at Marco.

"This isn't even your kitchen! Also - he started," Marco defended himself and threw the new apple back at Thatch, and Ace snickered.

"Get lost. You two are horrible together, do you know this?!" Thatch snapped. Ace threw his apple at Thatch, as they both left. Marco to shower and Ace to leave the house until Luffy would come back in the afternoon.

That night, the teasing took on a new facet.

Marco, Haruta, Izou, Thatch, Atmos, a few members of the first division, and Pops were deep into a game of cards when Ace came back. Earlier than usual. He had only brought Luffy to bed and left for his nightly round of doing _whatever_ half an hour ago. Usually, he wasn't back before one am, when it was only Marco, and sometimes Pops, awake in the main house.

Now he was home at eleven, giggling at himself, and obviously drunk out of his mind. He acknowledged them with a small wave and staggered upstairs. Marco couldn't hold back a sigh.

"Still didn't talk to him? For what are you waiting, Marco, really!" Thatch said, looking at Marco and then back at his cards with a stern gaze.

"I guess I'm a bit scared. He only just started to use other words than insults. What if he thinks I'm meddling? He hated that when I had to because of the concussion."

"I thought you two are so thick and thin? How good is your relationship, when you can't even have one teeny-tiny serious talk?" Haruta questioned. Marco didn't know her like that. But then she had always been the baby of the family. Maybe she felt like the soft sport they all had for her had been replaced. She liked Luffy, though.

"I think it's apposite to tread carefully here. Ace needs a place where he doesn't feel like he has to hide things, you know? Isn't that what family should be? People that maybe don't like what you are doing but will still support you?" Izou lay down his cards. Caro street. How did he manage to win every round?

"Supporting him on his quest of drinking himself to death? I don't know about that one," Atmos chimed in while mixing the cards.

"Izou is right," Pops declared. "If Ace finds acceptance here, his habits will die down sooner or later. We need to be alright with his behavior, and everything will slot together in time. For now, all we can do is be consistent in our support."

Marco silently agreed with their father. That didn't mean that he had to like it.

Upstairs, the shower was shut off, and a few minutes later, Ace reappeared, falling over his own feet on his way down the stairs, just managing to not take a tumble. Marco lay his cards down, observing Ace in concern. He looked even drunker than when he had come home. His eyes were droopy, his cheeks red, and his mouth half open.

"Are you comin' to bed soon, Marco?"

The question hit the table like a silent grenade. Marco hadn't kept it a secret per se that Ace was sleeping in his bed, but it also really hadn't come up in conversation. Marco saw a lot of opening mouths, and questioning looks in his direction. Haruta crossed her arms with a sour expression. Izou seemed ready to lynch Marco with questions, while Thatch gave him the look of a confused baboon that hadn't understood a magic trick. Pops grinned.

"I'm gonna finish this round, then I'm coming right up," Marco answered and picked up his cards to hide behind them.

His vision shifted off his cards, as Ace inserted himself into it - and then straight into Marco's lap.

It wasn't unusual anymore for Ace to be near: They slept next to one another and ended quite close if Marco had to wake him from sleep paralysis, and he was in need of comfort. It wasn't unusual to touch, but it had never happened in front of another audience than Luffy, who usually joined them in the middle of the night if he didn't sleep through. It had become a habit and natural surprisingly fast. Gone was the boy that hadn't trusted Marco enough to like him being in the same room as his little brother unsupervised.

Ignoring his siblings, Marco slung the arm that wasn't occupied with holding cards around Ace's back to steady him. Ace lay both arms around Marco's neck and let his head drop onto Marco's shoulder.

"I'm no' gonna wait all alone," he slurred, and a cloud of such alcoholic smell hit Marco in the face that he was surprised his eyes didn't start to water.

"That's fine," he said, dragging his face back a bit from Ace's mouth. "Did you drink straight up disinfection spray, or what is that smell?"

"Absinth. This is Absinth." And he burped into Marco's general direction. "Thought it was peppermint schnapps," he giggled.

At least he was happy. Even if there was nothing else that was positive about this.

Marco gave him a suffering smile and dragged him in closer to his chest. Ace looked ready to fall asleep, and then Marco would have to carry him up, so Marco decided to engage him into their game. "Do you want to help me with my cards? Which one should I get rid of next round?"

Ace peeked out of the dip between Marco's shoulder and neck, where he had rested his head. "That bitch right there," he said, pointing at one of Marco's cards. "He' a fuckboy if I've ever seen one. Looks like the human equivi- equiv'lent of a wet Nike shoe that u find all alone in som' ally. And u wonder what the fuck happened to it, but u really don't wanna inspect it to close, cause you are kinda disgusted - also, how he look twelve and twenty-four at the same time? His mom put som' protein powder in his formula? Throw him out, faster than he can say 'you the only one', Marco!"

"I'm pretty sure Marco has a jack of hearts," Atmos said, laughing into his own cards.

"Who the motherfuck would jack off to that? Dude's got a face that could make oceans dry." Ace took the card out of Marco's hand and threw it on the table. "There he goes. You deserve someone better, Marco. Oh, she is nice. Don't throw her out," he slurred, poking at Marco's cards.

"Ace, please a better description, than 'she looks nice', I can't work with that," Izou demanded, all business.

"She's the type of person to snake on others, but like with style, you know? She looks like she would rat you out for a ramen noodles flavor pack and you wouldn't even notice until she turned ya' into fucking spiceless noodles."

"Queen of clubs, I'm calling it. Her eyes are dead," Thatch mused.

Needless to say, Marco lost that round in record time.

He didn't bother with the looks of his siblings, as he took Ace by the hand to get him up the stairs. Ace was swaying badly and had gotten silent over the last minutes, clutching at Marco hard and burying his face in Marco's neck.

He maneuvered Ace into the bathroom, put him onto the closet toilet lit, and gently pushed his toothbrush into his mouth.

Ace scrubbed listlessly. His eyes falling close, as he dragged his legs up onto the toilet seat and leaned his forehead against them. Marco gently took the toothbrush, then Ace by the shoulders, made him rinse and drink some water.

"I have to pee, I'm gonna be there in a minute," Marco told him gently.

"I wait here."

"Ace, I have to pee."

"You got the tattoo of a treasure map on your dick?! Or maybe a nuclear launch code?" He asked aggressively, then looked at Marco sheepish. "I- I can look away."

So Marco peed, while Ace inspected his nails.

Marco got them both to his bed. Ace sat down, looking oddly lost.

Marco sat next to him, making a joint with less practiced fingers than Ace's, who was looking at Marco's hands mesmerized. Marco lit it up and made Ace take a few drags before stubbing it out again. It felt wrong, but it was better than sleep paralysis. Ace sacked against him with a grown and Marco closed his arms around him.

"You don't have to be my friend, Marco. If you don't wanna," he mumbled into Marco's neck.

"And you don't have to be mine, yet here we are."

Ace’s smile looked like it was fought for, but sincere.

"Did anything happen tonight? Anything you wanna tell me?" Ace blinked at him slowly, then shook his head. "Okay. Want to sleep?"

And as if he just waited for that, Ace dragged them both down, lay his head on Marco's chest, and was asleep in seconds.

Marco, a notoriously light sleeper, didn't even wake up when Luffy joined them and pushed his sharp elbows into Marco's ribs.

On the next day, Marco came into the kitchen from their a-mile-less-cause-hangover-run to Thatch and Izou giving off a serious ‘good cop bad cop’ attitude as they pushed him into one of the kitchen chairs.

"Now talk: What did you do to our baby protozoa?" Thatch asked, both hands on the table and leaning into Marco's face so closely his pompadour touched Marco's forehead.

Izou dragged him back. "This is still Marco we are talking about, Thatch."

"What exactly are you asking?" Marco questioned as calmly as he could.

"Thatch wants to ask how far you got on your journey of getting closer to Ace. And if you maybe have some sins to confess?"

"What?"

"Marco, brother dearest," Thatch said, the pompadour actually pushing Marco's head back, "do you harbor the wish of pursuing fucking coitus with Ace, is what I'm asking!"

Marco was so shocked it took him a moment to shake himself out of it.

"Are you guys insane? He is sixteen years old, what the fuck! He’s our little Ace!” He said, appalled and pushed the pompadour back with his forehead.

"Our little Ace sleeps in your bed, Marco? What are we supposed to make of that?"

"So does Luffy! Maybe you want to ask me the same question about him too? Thatch?"

"Oh."

Thatch sat down, a dumbfounded expression on his face. Izou just dragged one eyebrow up. "I still don't think it's that bad a question, and that clear an answer. I mean - does Ace know? That there is nothing between you?"

"What?" Marco asked again. His brain still hadn't caught up completely with the line of thought Thatch and Izou had thrown at him.

"I'm just saying that that yesterday didn't look platonic to me. Mostly from his side."

"Ace sees me as a friend. Someone he can come to for comfort. I don't think he had that in a while. Besides Luffy, but he has his role of big brother to fulfill for him."

"And you are sure this whole thing isn't shifting?" Izou wasn't convinced.

"What do you want to hear?" Marco asked exasperated.

"That you will make sure to set up some boundaries so Ace won't ever get the great idea to present you his virginity on a silver platter, only to lose you as a friend."

"Way too late on the virginity front. This is why I know Ace doesn't see me like that: Ace is sexually active and confident. He isn't someone to hold back if he likes a person."

Izou sat down next to Thatch and made the same dumbfounded face.

"What?"

"He has sex with men. I heard him talking about it with these wannabe thugs he spends his days with."

"Holy shit. Baby protozoa, nooo," Thatch said more to himself and dragged his fingers through his face.

"Does he know that you know?" Izou questioned. His brows were low and dangerously sharp.

Marco shrugged. "Yeah, I guess? But he doesn't speak about it, and I haven't brought it up."

"Maaarco. You HAVE to talk to him! He is stealing, drinking, sleeping around. We don't know the drugs he does or doesn't do." Marco loved Thatch for his compassion for every living being he came across. Thatch was the friendliest, most emphatic person he knew, besides Pops, but this was a dangerous case.

"Isn't he old enough to make his own mistakes? Wasn't our consent to give him the love he needs until he is ready to move past, or come over whatever may or may not have happened?"

"Of course something happened! You don't take your baby brother and leave your family when you are that young if everything's cool!" Izou explained, annoyed. "And I think you are right - we can't be condescending. But he needs to know about consent and safety. Go to him as Marco the doctor, not Marco his friend. That worked with the concussion, didn't it?" While speaking he dragged Thatch up at his hairstyle. "Come on. Marco needs some alone time to think."

They left Marco behind confused and unsure.

* * *

That had been the first time that the thought of _something_ between them had come up. Marco hadn't wanted to see it, but Izou had been right. How he is always right - why did Marco ever think he knew what he was doing?

Marco didn't really set up boundaries. He did that naturally, by being the quiet, well-read First Division commander, only that Ace had never seen that. Marco had enjoyed that immensely. People didn't come to cuddle with Marco. He just wasn't that kind of person. People came for advice and maybe some drunk talks, but Ace didn't understand authority at all. Ace and Luffy both acted the same around _everyone_. In most cases that was the reason why they clashed with people, but It was also what drew others in. Marco used to be part of the second group. These days? These days that's more complicated.

If it had been selfish of Marco to not reinforce some boundaries then it came back to bite him in the arse later on. At the very least, when Ace left without taking Marco with him.

Loving Ace had felt natural back then. In a platonic way for a long time. And later on in a different way.

Would Marco be exactly at this place in life, where he is now? If he wouldn't have allowed it. If he would have set up wave breakers strong enough to hold Ace at bay? Would he be on his way to have the last conversation with the mother of his dead child?


	18. The choices we make

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a tough one. In the senses you all probably deduced that it would be, but also in ways that might take you off guard. So proceed with caution.  
> Warnings: Discussion of child death. Violence. Discussion of underage. Self-harm.

Ilma is sitting on the sofa when Marco enters their home. She must have heard him, yet she hasn't moved or acknowledged him in any way. She is staring blankly at the television. It isn't on. Marco has the absurd thought of 'maybe she is mad because I didn't come home last night.' But that is not how Ilma works, and there are different things to be mad about if one of them could really muster up the energy.

They haven't said a word to one another in ten days.

The door to the nursery is a closed, distorted, mouth, telling Marco how much he failed, and there hasn't been more to say.

As he sits down on the couch next to her, Ilma's eyes do find his. Not much is left of the woman Marco found enough comfort in to fall for.

Marco has no idea how to do this.

Ilma knows herself well enough to never ask questions she wouldn't like the answers to. Ilma knows that Marco has more money than a doctor - or really anyone - should have. She never asked where it came from and what it actually was that Marco's family was doing. She doesn't know a thing about Ace, or Thatch, or Blackbeard. Where does Marco even start?

The answer is there, where his thoughts orbit around anyway because that's easier than thinking about the measurement of a baby's coffin: Ace. Talking about Ace is easy now, when he held him selfishly in his heart, away from his mouth, for so long. When did that happen? He takes a deep breath. In their silence, it's a loud enough starting signal for Ilma to focus on him. The first words in over a week and he is gonna start like this. "Do you know that Luffy has a brother?"

Ilma blinks. There is no surprise on her face, just a thoughtful stare at the TV. "Yeah? Luffy mentioned him to me once or twice. He is overseas, right?"

She doesn't know the importance of Ace, like everyone else in Marco's life does, and it feels alien to have someone speak about him in this manner. Just someone that was mentioned in passing. Not the guy that his division lovingly called ‘as beautiful and as hot burning as the sun. You want to get close, but you will hurt yourself.’

"He was." Is he still? This hot burning? "He left, six years ago, after someone we thought of as a friend killed one of our brothers."

Ilma frowns at the TV. "One of your brothers was killed?"

"His name was Thatch," Marco says and smiles. "He was a class clown kind of guy, always made sure everyone around him was doing fine. Ace blamed himself for his death and went after the guy who killed him, Marshall D. Teach."

"To revenge your brother?" She is calm about the possibility. Ilma hasn't been anything but calm in a while.

"Yes," Marco confirms quietly.

"Over the last few years, Ace worked himself up to him. Teach was building up an...organisation, so Ace became a worker for him to get closer to him, but he ultimately failed, and Teach now knows who he is. Ace did dismantle a part of his organization, though."

Ilma stays silent as she absorbs this information.

"Ace came back a few days ago, with the knowledge that Teach is coming here, too. What I'm- what I'm saying is that a very dangerous man is on the run and might try to take revenge on people associated with the Whitebeard name."

"You mean me."

"Yes," Marco breathes. "You aren't safe here anymore."

Ilma gives a joyless laugh at that.

Who cares about safety anymore? When they are both slowly going insane, counting seconds, minutes, hours, a heartbeat doesn't beat anymore.

"So you want me gone?"

Ilma isn't that direct, usually. She knows how to play her cards and stays silent until then. They are weirdly alike, him and her. Or they used to be before they were divided by guilt.

"Yeah," Marco whispers and can't believe himself.

Ilma nods, maybe to make it more real.

They are over.

They sit next to one another, trying to let it sink in, and it's easy because they had practice quiet recently.

Ilma nods again. "Can you send my stuff to my parents?" It’s like she waited for this. She sits straight and turns to him with the first attempt of a smile in days. "I guess I'm glad this whole Mafia thing is happening now. We wouldn't have found the incentive to do this on our own - at least not this fast."

So she does know that Marco is, or used to be, involved in organized crime. Marco isn't surprised: Ilma is far from dumb. She is smart. She is capable. So many traits she now won’t get to pass on.

"I would have loved her," Marco says suddenly. He doesn't know where it's coming from. "I would have loved our life together. I would have loved to have this."

Ilma takes his hand, and Marco doesn't flinch back.

"Me too," she whispers and Marco holds her hand in his. They both always have cold fingers.

"She would have had an amazing family."

Marco has to grin. "Yeah, especially from her Dad's side. Thirteen uncles with crazy jail stories to brag about in kindergarten."

"And a bunch of fanatic Christians on Mom's side," Ilma adds. Her smile looks like a mosaic version of it. Only pieces that try to be a whole.

Marco swallows. "What do you think happens after death?" Why have they never talked about that?

"Probably not what the fanatic Christians want to believe - I don't think there is anything. But maybe that's not so scary, because it can't be scary: It's nothing."

"Do you think she was scared?" Marco asks and blinks the tears away.

Ilma stays silent so long, Marco thinks he doesn't want to hear the answer. "Yes. I think she was. But isn't that proof that she lived? She was here. She felt emotions! Maybe she was scared, maybe she was excited. She experienced something. That means everything!"

She experienced fear, and that fear turned out to be justified. She died. She died, probably afraid.

"I wish I would have heard her laughing. Just once," Marco says. His voice sounds husky and not like his own.

"I wish I would have heard her crying. I keep thinking back to that silence in the operation theater. I never thought silence could be a sound to ring in your ears," Ilma answers slowly. So much pain in her voice.

Why can they only talk about this now? When it's too late? Why couldn't he be there for her? Too many whys with him. You regret the things you don’t do. Hasn’t he learned anything from Ace?

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, that I wasn't around. Mentally. In the last week. And-"

He can’t say it. He can’t even apologize for it because he is deathly afraid of forgiveness. Marco hadn’t been here. Not only just mentally.

Ilma shakes her head and tries again to form a smile. "I realized that I have let you be too much of my crutch since Albert."

Albert hasn't come up in conversation in years. He was the abusive ex-boyfriend that Ilma had run from. Right into Marco's arms. That she has to bring him up to excuse Marco’s behavior is just proof of how much Marco fucked up. He failed his family. Again. ‘Thatch,’ he thinks. ‘Thatch, if you could see me now, what would you say?’

Ilma’s gaze is more focused. She tries to smile once more, it’s a little more successful than her last attempts. "I'm gonna pack my bag," she announces and gets up. Her movements are energetic again. Closer to her usual self.

Maybe it's freeing. To be done with Marco. (He could ask Ace about that.)

Ilma caresses Marco's face lightly on her way past the sofa, and then Marco is left with his thoughts. It takes effort to stir them away. Away from the fear of change. Change is good when it happens naturally. It's just entropy.

Still - Marco just can't think about this now, so back to Ace it is. He closes his eyes and thinks of times when things were changing. Ace at the beginning of summer, when he was sixteen and Marco still hadn't talked to him about how they were all worried for him and weren't sure how to handle the situation anymore. When all Marco had to do was finally open his mouth. He needed to not only listen to Ace but actually say something serious back, even if he risked his good relationship with him.

He couldn't do it.

But then came the day when the choice was taken right out of his rage-shaken hands.

It had been a rather normal day: Ace had gotten up with Luffy to send him off to school, called Marco down for coffee, and had his first nap of the day in the living room. Marco drank his liter of coffee, read the newspaper, and patted Stefan, who joined Ace and Marco on the sofa.

They had breakfast, their morning run, and a sparring match. Then Ace was off, and Marco meditated, then went for his first division and doctor duties. He was too deep into his paperwork, to realize the time and the first irregularity in their day. Only when Luffy came home from school and asked Marco where Ace was, did he notice that Ace had yet to return.

"I haven't seen him since morning."

Luffy looked a bit saddened, but he caught himself fast and switched gears. "Can you train with me, then? Show me something new that I can impress Ace with later?"

"Sure," Marco said and got up. His papers could wait.

Together they walked to the garden and the little training area, where Stefan was lazing in the sun. Ace and Luffy trained together a lot. Their fights were grim and determined but lacked technique. Marco himself was a schooled Jeet Kune Do fighter, and a lot of his teaching was about precision in motions.

He spent the afternoon teaching Luffy a new kick, and it worked to get Luffy distracted from Ace's absence, but Marco was painfully aware of it now. Fossa and Rakuyo joined them for a while, and they too noticed that Ace wasn't there.

Suddenly, with a loud bang, the garden door flew open, and Izou ran in, red-faced, pressing his phone to his ear.

"Yeah. No. We understand completely. Yes. See you in three."

They looked at him, frozen in their motions: Luffy's leg still high up for a kick against a tree, Stefan still on the meadow, Rakuyo's fist a few centimeters in front of Marco's face.

"Monkey D. Garp is on his way with Ace. He was arrested. "

Marco dived out under Rakuyo's fist and into first division commander modus.

"What for?"

"He... He burned down a car. A police man's car."

That..could end bad. If it wasn't already. Hopefully being the grandson of the Chief of Police had some benefits. What had Ace thought? Marco hoped that he was alright.

Would Ace do something like this at random? Maybe. Marco wished for a good reason to understand why Ace had thought it a good idea to clash head-on with the cops.

A minute later, they heard loud car engines and screeching tires turning onto Moby Street way too fast. The poor garden door got the second kick in so many minutes to open it and Ace marched in: Hood over his head, nose bleeding, and arms crossed in front of his body, as his Grandfather held him by the back of his neck. Both were seething with intense anger.

Luffy rushed towards Ace, but Ace yelled, "No, Luffy! Stay out of this," as Garp and he passed them.

"Ace?" Luffy shouted and, after a second of hesitation, looked ready to run up to them again, but Marco held him back after catching Ace's pleading gaze.

Garp went up the veranda, still holding Ace's neck as if he was a naughty cat, about to be thrown out. Marco went after them, Izou took Luffy's hand and together, with Fossa and Rakuyo, they all entered the house.

Garp roughly pushed Ace towards one of the kitchen chairs. Snorting with rage, he turned to Marco, standing on the threshold.

"Where is Whitebeard?"

"Not in the city. Commando went to me," Marco answered, composed.

Luffy got past Marco and to Ace's side.

Ace didn't acknowledge him, his gaze hefted onto his grandfather, as he turned back to Ace and threw both fists onto the table between them.

"Talk! What the fuck did you think?!" He screamed into Ace's face, his own stern, veins pulsing in his neck. Ace didn't move a muscle in his face, just leaned back from the table and crossed his legs over one another in an act of serenity.

"Do I need to name you a few reasons to hate on cops? Well for starters, there is the fact that everyone who's a cop was bullied in school for being a social failure latchkey-kid, then decided to become a cop, for the nice taste of superiority and because they were too much of a chicken to become a criminal."

"Keep that shit for your manifesto, Ace, we both know that's not the reason! You are slipping, and you are dangering all the people here who gave you and your brother a home. Do you wanna lose that? The truce agreement between Whitebeard and the Cops dies, first thing I'ma have to do is collect you and your brother!"

Ace wiped at the blood on his face and refused to react in any visible way. Luffy looked at his brother in distress, then back at his grandfather. His fists clenched as he got away from Ace and to his grandfather's side of the table.

"We won't go with you! EVER!" He screamed.

"Luffy," Ace said in warning.

"You two will do as I say, and if I think it's best to get you out of here, so you don't close the doors to your careers as Cops, then you will come!"

"WE WON'T BECOME COPS!" Luffy yelled into his face.

"YOU LITTLE BRATS!" Garp yelled back and raised his fist. Luffy's eyes widened as he faced the impact.

Marco heard Izou take a sharp breath, Ace jumped up from his seat, all acts of calmness forgotten - but it was Marco who held Garp's fist back.

Garp's eyes, full of anger, found Marco's steady ones.

"No child will ever be hurt under Whitebeard's roof," he said slowly, not letting loose of Garp's gaze and fist.

"Oh yeah?" Garp said, and Marco saw the same determined yet disillusioned look he had observed Ace with, at their first meeting.

"Ace, why don't you tell us why you are wearing a hoodie? It is pretty warm here," he said, his eyes still hefted onto Marco.

Marco let his gaze wander to Ace. His arms crossed around himself, his head to the ground. Jaw grinding, biting on the insides of his cheeks.

"Ace?" Luffy asked and stepped over to his brother again.

Marco let go of Garp's arm, and they both faced Ace.

"Ace, you said you stopped?" Luffy said. His voice high up, unbelieving. Marco didn't understand what was going on, but Ace hadn't cared about being affronted about burning down a car - now he looked at his brother guiltily. Could it be?... No. No!

"It- it's not so bad, Luffy. It's fine. I'm really gonna stop, I just need some time."

"Show me!" Luffy demanded.

"What's going on?" Marco heard Rakuyo whisper to Izou. Marco couldn't see his face from his position in the kitchen, but Izou was the most quick-witted of them all, and, as Marco, he probably had a hunch about what was going on. What had been going on without them noticing.

"Come on, Luffy, it's-"

"Show me," Luffy fell into Ace's words loudly.

Ace looked at his brother, his features moving in a silent language only for Luffy to decode. Luffy answered with a headshake.

"Show me now."

Wordlessly Ace pushed up his sleeve, uncovered his underarm, and held it out for Luffy to inspect.

Luffy griped it and turned it around with a jerk.

"Oh god," Marco heard Fossa whisper.

Ace’s skin was peppered with round scars. Some old, some brighter and red. One couldn't be older than a few days at best. Cigarette burns.

"You said you stopped! You don't lie, Ace! You never lie. Not to me!"

"I did stop. I started again. I'm sorry, Luffy, it's not so easy."

But Luffy wasn't really listening to him anymore. Tears streamed down his face, and he dropped Ace’s arm as if it was poisoned. He turned around and stormed out of the kitchen, Fossa right on his heels, after him. Maybe in concern for Luffy, maybe because he too couldn't stand the sight of Ace's scorched arm.

They heard Luffy scream in anger and something, most likely the hideous vase gifted from Izou's crazy uncle, smash.

“I can’t change this. I never-” another loud crash, this time maybe one of the windows, Marco wasn’t sure, and then screamed rage beyond words. Fossa must have stepped in.

When it got quiet outside, Ace dragged his sleeve back down, but the view had already burned itself into Marco's retinas. His hands shook.

He took a stride past Garp to the kitchen table and dropped himself into one of the chairs.

"Sit," he commanded with a chipped voice that left so little room for disobeying, even Garp followed. Izou and Rakuyo came around the table to sit on Ace's side as he too, reluctantly, got down again.

Marco intended to give them a short second to gather themselves, but Garp spoke up.

"Your actions are hurting other people now, Ace. You might not care about Whitebeard, but I know how much you care about Luffy."

"Oh, you're playing the guilt card now? As original as fucking modern-day Shakespeare theater."

"What card am I supposed to play? There is very little you care about, brat."

"Well," Izou chimed in. "This all seems to boil down to one thing: Something has to change," he said with a pointed gaze towards Marco.

Growing silent, they waited for Marco to take over.

Marco stared at the table. It had a few cigarette scorches. Marco got rid of them that very night. Finally, he looked up at Ace.

"Ace, what do you want?"

"Hm?"

"What would your ideal outcome of this conversation and its influence on the future be?"

Ace still looked confused.

"Izou is right. Something definitely has to change. But how can we make this better? How do we create an environment where you don't feel the need to hurt yourself? How can we help?"

Marco hated that he had to, but he needed to address everything that had worried them all in the past. This was not the time to accuse Ace, but it was part of what needed changing.

"At the same time, the stealing needs to stop. Your pyromaniac tendencies too. We already saw that you don't do well when someone constricts your freedom when you had the concussion. We can't keep you in here, but we also can't let you go on like this. What can we do?"

Ace bit on the insides of his cheeks again. In the end, he just shook his head and refused to look up to them.

Rakuyo spoke up for the first time. "The stealing is about money, right? You don't want to be depending on us - Thatch's division owns gas stations. You could try out working there, maybe? A bit of routine and an alright pay. Maybe a bit of dabbing into normal society could be nice, I don't know..." He ended unsure of his own words.

Ace nodded. Maybe the guilt card had worked after all? He didn't seem thrilled about the opportunity. Marco thought chances were high, that Ace just deduced nodding along as the fastest way to get out of this conversation.

"Do you think that could work? As a way to stop stealing?" Marco asked him.

Ace nodded.

"So Rakuyo can go tell Thatch right now to go with you to one of our gas stations tomorrow, for a first day?"

Ace nodded.

Garp, next to Marco, threw Ace a taxing look.

"The next time I hear about you burning something, I'm gonna drag you back home to me. Understood?"

Ace nodded.

"If I do hear about you stealing again, I'm gonna have you do community service hours in a batman costume at a children's hospital."

Ace nodded.

Garp's eyes became very small.

"The next time I hear about you hurting yourself on purpose, I will call Dadan. You hear me?"

That did get a reaction out of Ace.

"You wouldn't," he exclaimed shocked.

"Don't test me on that. I will!"

Marco saw Ace's anger flare up, but before he could unleash it, Marco rose to speak.

"Thank you for bailing him out, Garp. We will try to work on this together with Ace. Izou will let you out. Rakuyo, please talk to Thatch. And you," he turned to Ace, "go up to the bathroom. I want to have a look at your arms and nose and clean them."

He hated not letting Ace have a choice.

Ace and Rakuyo left immediately, glad to be out of the situation. Garp turned to Marco. "You know that he was just bullshitting himself out of here, right?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe. But we can't cage him. We can't observe him at all times." Marco got up. "I'm gonna talk to him in private now."

He left Izou and Garp behind and got up the stairs.

Ace was standing in front of the door to his and Luffy's room.

"I HATE being mad at you," Luffy screamed from inside.

"I know. I'm sorry, that I made you mad. It's fine if you don't want to talk to me right now."

"I HATE not talking to you, too."

"Me too," Ace answered quietly and leaned his forehead against the door.

"Now go away! I'm mad!"

Marco stood next to Ace and laid a hand on his shoulder in silent support. Ace turned away from the door, not even acknowledging Marco on his way to the bathroom, where he fell gracelessly onto the closed toilet lit.

Marco closed the door behind them and leaned against it.

The day had taken a sharp turn. He allowed himself a second of centering himself.

Ace liked to stub cigarettes out on his own skin. Jesus, fuck, how was this reality? How did he not see it? Ace, never feeling cold Ace, wearing a jumper to bed. Because of Marco, or because of the possibility, that Luffy would see the scars, when getting into bed with them? Most likely because of Luffy. Garp had said it himself - Ace didn't care about them. Was that true? Was that actually true? No, Ace had started to open up to Marco. At least a tiny bit.

"Your hands are shaking," Ace observed quietly.

Marco pushed himself off of the door and towards the bathroom cupboard that held his medicine kit.

"Sorry. I'm just - mad."

"Yeah, that seems to be the theme of the day," Ace whispered. He dragged his legs up the toilet and pressed his face against his knees for a second.

"I'm not mad at you. I'm mad I tried to not see it for so long. You aren't doing too well, hmm?" He asked kindly. "I thought it's best to let you come to us in your own time, but that was a mistake, right? I failed you."

"No," Ace said immediately: "You have been nothing but kind to me. I don't deserve it. I almost lost you guys your deal."

His jaw was furiously grinding down onto the insides of his cheeks again, so Marco gently cupped his face.

"The deal doesn't matter. What matters is that you get all the help you can get. Would you like to talk to a professional?"

Ace's eyes stayed cast down as he shook his head. "I know what they would tell me, and it wouldn't make anything better." Marco would push on that later.

"Can you talk to me, then? Without me telling you anything unhelpful in return. Can you tell me when the urge to hurt yourself comes up?"

Ace dragged his head away from Marco and placed his chin on his knee. "I don't do it much. It's just a last resort."

"When do you do it exactly?"

Ace paused. "When I...When I need to forget about everything for a while, and I don't have anyone to fuck with."

Marco had wanted to talk about that as well, so now was a good opportunity.

"Can I have a look at your arm?"

Ace pushed the sleeve up. True to his words, the scars weren't many. Most seemed old. Still, Marco spread antibiotic ointment generously over Ace's skin.

"There are many ways to hurt oneself. Not all involve straight up pain."

"If you are trying to say I sleep with men to hurt myself: No. It's the opposite. I sleep with men so that I don't hurt myself."

"But you choose to do both for the same reason."

That shut Ace up.

"In the eyes of the law, you are too young to give consent."

"This is literally a mafia house, and you are telling me about laws?"

"I'm trying to tell you about consent and it's meaning. Ace, if you don't have a good feeling about certain things, you don't have to do them. Sex should always happen pressure- and expectation-free."

"Oh, I expect a lot of pressure from sex, if you know what I mean."

"Not funny."

"Really? I thought that was a good one."

Marco gently placed a nonstick bandage onto the freshest burn.

"Are you using protection?"

Ace shrugged. "Sometimes."

Marco closed his eyes for a second and breathed in deeply once more. He couldn't criticize Ace's choices if he wanted Ace to talk about them in the future. Leaving him to his own devices had crystalized as being a mistake.

"I want you on prep, and we are gonna do STD testings every three months," he said, not leaving a choice for Ace to make.

Ace accepted with a slight nod.

"Did anyone ever make you do something you didn't really want to do? Something you weren't a hundred percent comfortable with?"

"Marco, honestly. Do you really think anyone could make me do things I wouldn't want to do?" He asked with confidence.

"Yes. The other arm, please."

"There is nothing on the other arm."

It was a test. Marco could see it in Ace's eyes. Would Marco trust Ace to not look, or would he make sure?

Marco didn't look.

"Can I see your nose, then?"

Ace tipped his head back so that Marco could carefully clean the dried blood away. How had it gotten bloody in the first place? Had Garp hit him?

"We talked about how we should move forward in regards to you, you know?" Marco said. His gaze fixated on Ace's nose.

"Oh," Ace said, busy trying not to move too much.

"We came to the conclusion that this mustn't be an off-limits topic. Sleeping with others and I guess the self-harm gets onto that list, too. We want you to talk about this. As much as you can. Without fearing our reaction. I mean, If you care enough to fear it."

"Of course I care!"

Ace freed his face from Marco's grip to look him in the eyes.

"Gramps only said that I don't, so that I would react. I care about you. I do!"

Marco nodded and smiled. "I'm glad. I was a bit worried. Because I care about you quite a lot, okay?"

Ace blinked up at him with the gaze of a lost puppy. The question 'why' couldn't be clearer if voiced.

Marco slung both arms around him, and Ace came pliantly.

"Do you think you can do it? Talk to us? Be a bit more open?"

"Yeah. I promise."

"Good."

* * *

Ilma's steps are loud on the stairs. Will this be the last time she walks them? The last time she looked at the name on the door? Marco hopes it for her sake.

Marco gets up from the sofa. He can't breathe around the pain in his chest. This will be it. He will only have Moby Street after this. Moby Street that he tried to escape from.

Ilma will only have her Christian family and maybe some of the friends she left behind.

This house will slowly empty until it doesn't hold enough memories anymore to be a good reason to cling to it. It is gonna be past.

Ilma stands in front of him, the traces of tears are still left on her cheeks. She preferred to cry them alone, and Marco can't blame her. She drops her duffel bag and throws her arms around Marco one last time. It is the last time. It's the ending of a story so sad, it should never be told. It should stay forgotten, in a book with a dusty cover, in a basement, where it grows moldy in dampness until all words are lost.

Marco pushes his hands into Ilma's dark hair, and their lips meet for a final time. They seal the book. May no one ever try to open it up again.

Ilma does cry, and Marco wishes he could too, but his eyes stay dry as she pulls away.

"We must never blame one another. We must never blame ourselves," Ilma whispers. Marco can agree to the first part. The second, the second is harder. He nods anyway.

"Goodbye," he whispers.

This time her smile attempt leaves her in more tears.

"Goodbye. I know it's for the better, but-" She is crying too hard to speak. Marco tries to take her in his arms again, but she holds him at arm's length away. "Marco - promise me that you will talk, okay? To your family, or a professional, or a friend. Please. Don't get lost alone in your head, okay?"

How the tables have turned.

He nods. He doesn't manage to say anything.

"Okay," she whispers through the tears. "We are gonna be okay. Someday."

She believes it. They have helped to build each other back up from scratches. After Albert, after Ace. They can do it again.

Marco watches her leave for her car in the driveway. When she is out of view, he goes upstairs and stares at a closed door with a pretty blue colored name on it.


	19. Ilma

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Ace talking about his relationship with Marco and their age difference in a joking manner. Mentions of violence

Ilma's Twingo has been hers for all her journey as an adult. It has accompanied her through so many stages of her life, it is like a trusted companion. Ilma prides herself on being able to take care of it on her own, but she doesn't have to, often. It is a sturdy car. The Twingo gives her security. They have been through so much together - even if this is her lowest point: This won't be the end. It can't be. What is broken can be fixed.

Getting out of the driveway is centering. She waves at Mr. Fanning, their - from now on only Marco's - neighbor. He doesn't know this is the last time they will see each other. Marco checks up on Mr. Fanning, with his asthma, regularly. Ilma used to sit with him on his couch when Marco had night shifts in the hospital. They were close, Mr. Fanning and her. Now she doesn't even feel like saying goodbye to him - or anyone else in this life she is leaving behind. She binks the last tears away and looks at the house in the rearview-mirror one last time - and then it's gone. She won't be back here. She gets to drive off into another future.

That is if she manages to stop the Twingo _right now,_ to not drive over the young man that has suddenly gotten up from, fuck if Ilma knows where, to jump in front of her car.

Ilma hits the breaks and gets the Twingo to a hold.

The stranger smiles and starts gesticulating for her to wait and pull down her window. His grin is kind and evokes trust. Marco's warning rings in her ears. " _What I'm saying is that a very dangerous man is on the run and might try to take revenge on people associated with the Whitebeard name_." This couldn't be? No one would actually try to harm her a meter away from the driveway on an open street. It has to be a random encounter. Right? For a split second, she sees herself just giving full speed. She just wants to be gone. On the road and concentrate on nothing but driving. But the man at the window stays persistent.

Reluctantly Ilma winds down the window as the stranger comes over to the driver's side.

"Hi," he says and his dark eyes glide over her with way too much interest for someone who is just looking for information on a location. Maybe it's just obvious that she has been crying. "I just saw you coming out of the driveway. You must be Ilma, right?"

Ilma is too tired to lie. "Yeah," she says tonelessly.

"I don't know if Marco ever mentioned me, but I am Ace, and I wanted to speak to you." His tone is light. If this is actually Luffy's brother, he would know what happened, right? Marco or Luffy would have told him. But his tone doesn't suggest any hints of sadness.

"He told me about an Ace, right about now. He also told me about evil gang mafiosos that are apparently out to get me. I just want to leave, okay? I don't know who you actually are, but you might be one of those guys, and I'm not in the mood for it."

He blinks in surprise. Then his grin comes back, and yes, that could be Luffy's brother, if that smile is an identification mark to go by. "Okay, let's see...If left alone in front of a computer, Marco will get sucked down by the youtube algorithm and just watch funny bird videos for hours. He can't dance sober, but eight tequila shots and he is a professional. He loves pop music, but he would rather swallow his tongue than admit it - it's still what he whistles along to. He sings about his chores. He is an aggressive cuddler. He loves animals. Nothing excites him more than knowledge, and he loves sharing it, but you have to coax it out of him because he thinks it's nerdy."

She stares at him in stunned silence.

"Oh, and I have this!"

He drags up his jumper and shirt, and on his bare skin, where Marco's tattoo sits over Whitebeard's cross, he has an identical one. Only the words aren't the same. In Marco's chicken scratch cliche doctor handwriting that Ilma perfected reading only somewhere in the last years, it says, ' _Is that your hand or is it mine?'_

She unlocks the doors. Ace walks around and gets in, in one smooth motion.

They look each other over in shared interest.

"I," Ilma starts, "I always knew, there was someone. But I never expected them to be so..."

"Male?"

"Young."

He snorts. "You wouldn’t believe all the issues that Marco had with that." He shakes his head with an annoyed eye roll and continues in a fake voice, ‘Uhh, Ace, what if I am grooming you? Ace, what if you only want me because you feel safe with me? You know you can get all my undivided love and support without us having sex, right?’ - As if that would have been the fucking point."

Ilma needs a moment. She stares ahead, out of the front window. "I just - whoa. Luffy's brother? _Luffy's brother_ is Marco's ex?"

"If it helps - we aren't blood-related."

"A bit, I guess." Ilma has to sort through her thoughts. This is the answer to so many questions she has had in the past. "So the tattoo?"

Ace's hand strokes over his chest fondly. "It's the first part of the sentence. He didn't tell you about it, did he?"

Ilma shrugs and wants to make up an excuse, but then it hits her that this man _knows_ Marco. "You probably know what it's like to try to get answers out of Marco."

Ace groans. "A fucking nightmare: Make him talk about dumb shit until he doesn't realize he is actually talking about something that has meaning."

"Or make him think he can help you if he has to give something of himself up," Ilma adds.

He nods in agreement. "Yeah, that also worked, back then. God, that shit was hard. And I mean - he doesn't do it on purpose, he himself just doesn't know what he is thinking, sometimes. Until he voices it, and he is embarrassed about that."

Ilma can't believe it. Years and years of her making up excuses for her friends. Why she doesn't know something about Marco, and never managing to voice how hard it is to make him talk about the past or his dreams - and now right here is someone who understands. Who came to the same conclusions. God, where has he been when Ilma felt like she needed a Marco-for-beginners-course?

But it wouldn't have changed anything. Their child would have died, and they would have been done all the same. It's too late to have this conversation.

Maybe it can bring her closure, though.

"How did you meet him? Luffy once told me that he has known Marco since childhood, but I also know that he lived in Brazil before coming here."

"Luffy was twelve, and I was sixteen. We had only just gotten to the US, and all we knew was the Mob life. Our grandfather sent us Pop's way, and there we were - a teenager, demanding to become a member of the Whitebeard Mafia in exchange for a safe place for his baby brother. And Pops was like, 'yeah, right up my ally. Adopted.'"

He laughs. It's the most carefree sound anyone made around Ilma in the last week. "Marco and I became friends fast. We bonded over bad humor and fighting. I was one fucked up teenager - really I wouldn't wish myself at the time to my worst enemy - but they all accepted and supported me. Marco especially. Then I fell in love with him, and he fell into deep-dark panic-mode, and it took forever, but in the end, we got together."

"And why did you break up?"

Ace sighs, looking ahead out of the front window. "I wasn't good for him anymore. He was so attentive to my needs, he forgot his own. We both didn't see it for a while, but when I did I knew we had to break up."

"Fuck," Ilma says. "Fuck, he did that with me, too. Right until-" she swallows hard. "Until the baby died."

Ace gives her a sad look, and his dark eyes are shining. He is a beautiful man. Ilma understands why Marco fell for him.

"That's what I wanted to talk about," he answers hoarsely. "I'm not presumptuous enough to imagine just for one second that I can understand what you are going through. But I know Marco. I know what Marco is like when it all... gets too bad. I'm here to tell you that I will do whatever it takes to make sure Marco gets through this."

He gives Ilma the time she needs to form an answer.

"That's a relief."

"I wasn't sure you wouldn't feel threatened." He smiles at her, warm and open. "I'm glad you don't."

Ilma can't really explain it, but there is so much kind and gentle energy around him. Maybe it's just because they are having such a private conversation for a first meeting, maybe it's because Marco made sure she wouldn't get close enough with his brothers to talk about Marco, and it feels good to meet someone with the same experiences in loving Marco.

"We broke up."

She can say it. It's the first step in a good direction. It had to happen.

"Oh. He said he was gonna tell you to leave because we are about to have a mafia war, but I thought-" he stops himself and blinks at her confused.

Ilma shakes her head. "We were happy with one another because we were sure we'd have a family together. We were each other's potential of a happy home. But even if we would try again, this would forever stay between us. Marco has always been there for me, but over the last week he just... couldn't. We can't help each other with this. I wanted to leave anyway, I just didn't have the energy yet."

Ace slowly reaches out to take her hand. Ilma isn't a big fan of strangers touching her, but maybe he isn't one. "I'm so so sorry you didn't get to have that happy home. For all three of you. You all deserved it."His voice is full of sorrow. He means it. "Luffy told me about her about four months ago. And at first, I was like - whoa, I guess that really is it: Marco gets his happy ending while I run after a sleep-paralysis demon looking crackhead of a worthless, fratricidal piece of shit. But then I was captured. And tortured. And I thought so much about her. How the world would get ten fucking times better if Marco's child would live in it. And that I wanted to see her. I don't think Marco would have ever let me meet her, but I would have had Luffy drop off the most awesome birthday presents in his name. And maybe he would have shown me some pictures of her. I lived because I wanted that. She was a big reason why I refused to go insane. She saved me."

Ilma is crying again. God damn it, she thought she was done with it for the day. She is tougher than this.

"So thank you. For her. I hope you never regret her."

His honesty evokes honesty. "I won't. She is the last thing in my life I will ever regret." She puts her second hand on top of his. He is missing a finger.

"She had a great impact on many people, and we won't forget her for it," he says softly.

"Thank you for her."


	20. Top 5 Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry, just a short place holder chapter. 
> 
> I don't know how he managed to, but my friend was supposed to come over on Halloween, he drove 90 km via bicycle, to then be told by me that Halloween would only be in the coming week. My dude was one weekend too early. (lmaaaaao) So I had a visitor over that last week and not much time for writing.
> 
> Happy Halloween, you all. Hope you can have fun even with the pandamic.

Marco took Luffy and Ace out for a weekend hiking trip. They had been ecstatic about it. Marco couldn't even imagine what the big city felt like for two kids that had basically grown up in a forest. They both didn't really talk about the past, but when they did it wasn't about the people, but the places, the animals, and nature. They both couldn't sleep behind closed windows, preferred to be outside in general, and surprised Marco again and again with their survival knowledge and skills.

"The trees look so different here, right Ace?" Luffy yelled from his spot high up in an oak.

"Yeah," Ace sighed from where he was lying in sun-soaked grass, not even opening his eyes.

It felt good to be away from the city. Marco hadn't even realized how stressed he had been by the never-ending experiences it tried to sell with blinking neon-light and a cacophony of noise. Luffy and Ace, whose relationship was already incredibly close in the city, changed in this environment: They worked together in making a fire, fishing, searching for edible plants, without the need to exchange a word. Nether portrayed uncertainty in interacting, or managing life in the city, with only adult strangers closely around them, but out here, their motions felt more natural in a way. Well learned hand movements and spirits that seemed freer, their laugh louder. Marco was glad that he got to experience this with them. To see them in 'natural habitat' felt as rewarding as sitting in front of their fire, with bellies full of self-caught fish and lungs free of city-smog.

Ace and he shared his evening blunt, while Luffy, armed with a flashlight, went for a big bug hunt.

"I saw something online," Ace said, his gaze never leaving the flames, his demeanor relaxed, sprawling sideways in his camping chair.

"Please don't tell me it's this 'Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus' thing, Thatch won't shut up about."

"No, never heard of that - does he want a mega shark or a giant octopus?"

"Probably both."

"We could do animal fights with them. Sell tickets and shit."

"Or we could just sell Thatch," Marco said, and Ace gave him his relaxed high-smile.

"No - I saw a game online. It goes like this: I tell you my top five things of something, and you try to guess the category I chose. You in?"

"Sure."

"Let’s see. Okaaayyy. Finding your way to religion, going to meetings with people just like you and crying over one another, a sudden interest in new social circles, obsessing over something completely random to the point where it becomes your life, cigarettes most likely.

Marco gave his sluggish brain a second, then said, "Top five bullet points on the list of Jehovah’s Witnesses on how to catch you, or like - I don't know. Your future?"

Ace snorted laughter. "No, top five things People do when combating bad drug addictions."

Marco snickered. "Okay, now I get it. My turn. Hmmm, growing up without a father, being afraid of intimacy, the evil of the world and how everyone else is false, why Hitler wasn't that bad, and being bullied in school."

"Top five shitty things people say into a camera before starting a school shooting?" Ace guessed.

"Close. Top five topics Nazis want to discuss when they go to prostitutes."

They both grinned.

"Me again. Growlithe, Absol, Shiggy, Darkrai, and Arceus."

"Top five war cries, that you never heard 'the 300 'use but that they screamed on a daily basis."

"Close enough," Ace laughed. "You again."

"Hitting the Gym, Almond-Milk, Meditation, Adderall, Joga."

"Easy: Top five things people tell you to do to overcome your depression," Ace answered. "Being choked by a raccoon, poisoning your family, Hitting on-"

"Thatch's five favorite activities," Marco fell into his words.

"I wasn't even done, whoa."

"Tom and Jerry, The PowerPuff Girls, Batman, the Simpsons, Professor Gadget."

"Uuuh," Ace said with a wicked smile. "Top five things you search for on PornHub."

"Spot on," Marco deadpanned.

"Ice, Captain Smoker, your fingers, when you breathe out like 'phhh' instead of 'houuu', Christmas in an orphanage."

"Hmm," Marco mused. "Top five things I don't want to see featured in a thriller?"

"You don't want to see your fingers in a thriller?"

"My immediate concern was 'Christmas in an Orphanage' but yeah, that also - what was that actually?"

"Top five things that are cold."

"You think Captain Smoker is cold?"

"I’m friends with him and, let me tell you, Dude doesn't move a muscle in his face. Like ever."

"What?"

"Yeah, it's like he is a machine. Or a robot that was programmed to act human-like. But the code was written by Reagan."

"No. No, Ace - what: You are friends with Captain Smoker? How the fuck did that happen?"

"Oh, he arrested me once for something not so bad. We started talking, and he was like 'alright, this shit would be too much paperwork, just never do that again' Then I annoyed him until he wanted to choke me to death and tried but failed. We smoked some of his accumulated evidence of the evening, and that was that. It was actually his car that I burned down. We had a bit of a fight."

"So you aren’t friends anymore?" Marco tried hard to not sound relieved.

"No, we made up. He likes me for my passion, so it was a good move. Maybe he is programmed to learn from human behavior happening around himself, and I'm a great study object. But he usually has time in the mornings, and now I'm mostly busy with my shift in the gas station."

Ace had started a week ago, and in the beginning, Marco had thought Ace would get out of there as soon as he could, but he seemed to enjoy his time there quite a lot. Thatch gave him a few five hour shifts a week, just long enough so that he could be home when Luffy came back from school.

"I'm never alone; at least one of my guys is usually in to visit, and I'm meeting lots of new people there. It's fun."

"Did I tell you about this high as fuck dude who wanted to just get in for a second to get some long papers and she stayed for about an hour to discuss with me if Obama would be in Slytherin or Gryffindor and then had me read her both their horoscopes to see if they'd be compatible. And I said something along the lines of 'uhh says here he is a Slytherin and not compatible with Hufflepuffs born in May, and she cried until I gave her free ice cream. I seriously love this job!"

Ace having less time for his worrisome habits was a good thing, and Marco enjoyed knowing where he was. At least until evening.

Ace leaned forwards in his chair, and his eyes were shining in the light of the fire. "Teach says I will be ready to run the station alone in a week, then he doesn't need to babysit me anymore. I can't wait to just do lots of stupid stuff I should not be doing."

"How are you getting along with him?" Marco asked. Teach wasn't a member of the Whitebeard Mafia, more an associate, and a trusted friend. He worked under Thatch as a leader in the Whitebeard gas stations and was doing a good, if not remarkably good job.

"I don't know about him. His humor is a bit icky, but sometimes he does make me laugh. If you tell Thatch that I said that I will make you gargle dead guinea pigs to the point of your ultimate demise."


	21. A door closes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Violence against...things...? Discussion of child death, depression  
> basically, a whole bunch of sad gay babies.

Ace knocks on Marco's door and lets out a shaky breath. He knew talking to Ilma would be emotional, but he hadn't thought it would get so wet and teary. On both sides. He has to fully catch himself before Marco opens the door. He thought he was ready, but now his nerves are fluttering again. This is just Marco. Just his Marco, who is suffering and in need of someone who understands him. Ace can do that.

So Ace waits. A minute. And another. He rings again. Marco has to be at home. Ace would have seen him leave, and the light is on upstairs. Still, Marco doesn't open. Well, Ace wouldn't be Ace if he wouldn't be ignoring that as a clue for no unwanted disturbances. He tries the doorknob, but it's locked. All right, no problem. He jumps over the hedge into the little garden that leads around the house to the backdoor. And that is open.

Ace steps into Marco's life without him, through the door and into the living room.

Marco was never one to own much stuff, and that reflects in the living room that looks as clean and impersonal as if it came straight out of an Ikea catalog. There is just one picture of Marco and Ilma at a feast that might have been their wedding. If it was, it was a damn untraditional one. It shows Ilma and Marco at a dinner table, arms around one another and smiling, surrounded by the Whitebeard family and a few other people that Ace doesn't know. The focus is on Ilma's and Marco's hands, intertwined, stretched towards the camera, to show off the rings around their fingers. Ace doesn't think he has seen Marco wear it. Maybe he just didn't get into the habit, or has to take it off for his doctor shifts or something? In the picture, Marco looks happy.

Ace walks into the kitchen. Small bundles of herbs hang from the ceiling, and it's homey. Maro can't cook for shit, so this must be Ilma's personal touch. It's nice.

The stairway up has a few pictures of Ilma and a group of girls. Of Marco and Ilma, with a bunch of people Ace doesn't know, and Marco looks like he doesn't either his mimic is so uncomfortable. Ace is inspecting the picture of an early stage pregnant Ilma, Marco's hands on her stomach, and both their eyes shining, when he hears a noise from upstairs.

As far as human-made sounds go, it's not so grim: It's not Izou's scream over Thatch's death-level, it's not Ace as his hand got smashed-level, and it's really not Luffy when someone else ate all the meat-level. But Ace knows instinctively that something is going very wrong.

The sound of rapid breathing gets louder as Ace climbs the last of the stairs.

He rounds the corner, and Marco comes into view. His knuckles are bleeding. He is breathing heavily. He is very silent otherwise, and he stares straight ahead. Blood is dripping from his hands to the floor, and Ace follows the movement quietly.

Marco turns to him.

And just says nothing.

Warily Ace gets closer until he stands right next to Marco and the blood from his fingers drops onto Ace's shoes. Together they look at the remains of a prettily painted door. Marco punched a hole right through the drawn on name, but rests of the color are still visible at the edges. Through the hole, Ace can see a small section of the nursery.

Now, Ace isn't one to think things through naturally. He can, when he has to. He had to learn and rely on that skill a lot during his undercover time. But this is not undercover life. This is Marco, and Marco thrives when someone shows him that it's alright to have emotions and makes a step in that direction. Marco had a good start here, but this has the potential to be a truly cathartic experience:

So Ace does not think twice, and punches his own fist through the door.

A splinter of the already existing edge from Marco's punch drags over his skin and scratches him. His ring finger throbs. Ace hasn't punched anything since losing his little finger and is pretty satisfied with the outcome. The hole in the door is bigger.

Marco gives Ace a look, and Ace shrugs and punches another time. He drags his arm out of the hole and makes a 'your turn' twitch with his eyebrows.

And damn does Marco deliver. His punches are calculated, fast, and brutal, and then the door flies out of hinges and crashes to the ground, after a well-aimed kick.

Marco gives Ace another look, searches for conformation, Ace nods, and Marco goes berserk on the rest of the room. Ace is surprised he doesn't throw the mattress out of the window. He is still scarily silent as he stomps his food through the changing table, throws the mobile, and kicks the rocking chair.

All in all, it's too well calculated, so Ace feels like he has to step in again: He screams and slams a clothing hamper into the ground.

Marco's eyes land on the baby monitor, he throws it into the air, once, as if to test its weight, then smashes it with all force against the wall. It shambles and falls in disassembled parts around the remnants of the mobile, in a mosaic of sorrow.

Ace shatters the night light against the same part of the wall, so it's part's can mix in. He steps back because the last part Marco has to do alone.

Marco walks up to the crib and, still without a sound, dismantles it. Annihilates it, so throughout, with his fists and feet, the room starts to look like what Ace imagines it would look like after a bomb went off.

In the end, they both sit in this mosaic of sorrow and destruction, breathing heavily, and Ace says, "so you definitely didn't stop going to the gym and fighting. Here I thought you would finally feel ready to age in peace, without me there reminding you of fleeting youth."

Marco throws a piece of wood at him. Ace can't even detect what it belonged to a few minutes ago.

"I kept fit just in case I ever got the chance to kick you in the nuts."

"Really?"

"No."

"I mean, you can try if you want to, but I got really strong over the last years."

"I can still kick your ass, don't think differently for even a second," Marco answers, and the beginning of a smile is buried in his carefully placed neutrality.

"Well, my ass can take a lot," Ace answers with an eyebrow wiggle.

"And here I thought you might not be as crude anymore."

"Only for you, no one else appreciates it."

"I feel very honored." Now the smile is clearly there. Ace still got it. But was this enough bullshit to make Marco talk about feelings? Thank god, they made up this shortcut.

"Top five?" He asks.

Marco's smile is half nostalgia, half sadness.

He takes a long time to think about it, and Ace waits him out patiently.

"Fear, hopelessness, shock, denial - and. And-" He swallows and shakes his head. Sinks his teeth into his lower lip.

"Top five emotions you felt when you were told she had died." Ace makes sure to not frame it like a question. Marco doesn't have to confirm it if he doesn't want to. He does it anyway.

"Yes. There is something else. I - I have to tell you. I think I can only tell you because you are really the last person who's opinion matters to me now."

This is about Marco - Ace can take time later to feel hurt about that. He doesn't move a muscle to not scare Marco from talking.

Marco swallows, and he looks so sad, sitting in this debris of wood and broken dreams. He finds Ace's eyes, and his words are hoarse. "I felt relieved."

"They confirmed she was dead, and right to that moment, I felt panic like I have never felt it before, and then the first thing, after they said she is dead, was relief. And then only guilt. Not because she died, but because of my reaction to it."

Ace's stomach has sunken down to his knees.

Marco always wanted to be a father, and he had been as ready for it as anyone ever could be. He had taken care of so many of his siblings. Kids made him laugh louder and freer, in the way that otherwise only Ace could manage to. Ace didn't get it. "But you've always wanted children?"

Ace hadn't gotten Marco to talk about it often, while they still were together, but Ace had known. How Marco dreamed of having his own family. Ace, always trying on how to tick Marco's boxes, had started a few conversations with stuff like 'In five years when we are married and have kids,' and 'I can't wait to be a stay at home dad' and in one very drunk moment 'Marco, put a baby into me.' He had realized pretty fast that this was one big veto no-no completely off-limits topic for Marco, because Marco wanted it so much he didn't even dare to dream up the possibility.

"I wanted her. I want her. I just-," he buries his head in his hands.

Ace doesn't dare to reach out with his hands, but he still has words. "I think sometimes it's comforting to know that you don't have to adapt to change. Even if you wanted it desperately. Remember how often you were relieved that you didn't buy concert tickets because even if you loved the band, in the end, you didn't want to go because of the effort it would take."

"Well, she isn't a fucking band."

"Yeah, I suppose it would have been hard to sell tickets for the sound of a crying infant."

"Don't know, 'Babymetal' seems to be going strong."

They both snort. This situation is fucked up, but they don't stop being Marco and Ace. Their dynamic is as comforting as a warm blanket.

"I wanted her. I wanted her so much."

"You don't have to prove that. You don't have to feel miserable and guilty from now on just to prove that to yourself."

"It's not like that. I think. I don't know anymore."

Ace doesn't know what else to say to that. He discovers that even now, deep down, there is still a part of him that is mad at Marco for not knowing what he feels. That realization brings so much guilt, he gets up to flee the sensation. "Well, let's clean your knuckles, and then we can start to clean up this whole mess."

Ace gives Marco a second alone and finds the bathroom on his own. He rummages through the bathroom cabinet in search of disinfection spray. He finds antidepressants instead. Zoloft.

"Are those yours or Ilma's?" He asks Marco, just arriving in the doorframe.

"Mine." Ace looks at him with wide, fearful eyes. "They are old. From right after our breakup. I haven't taken them in years - stop with the afraid puppy eyes!"

Ace turns from him so that Marco can't see his face and to get the disinfection spray. Marco cleans out his hands under the faucet. Ace gently takes Marco's hands and dries them carefully.

"You are bleeding, too."

"Ah, it's not so bad," Ace murmurs and sprays each knuckle carefully. "Do you remember how often you had to do this for me?" 

"I've lost count. You were such an angry child."

"I wasn't a child."

"You were. At least in the beginning. You were mature. And traumatized. And just a teenager."

"Please don't tell me this is a comeback to 'oh no, it's so wrong to love you, blablabla' - cause that shit made me feel like shit," Ace says, and by now he isn't cleaning anything off Marco's knuckles anymore. He is just touching his hands. Marco has the most beautiful hands. Rough from fighting and big. Ace used to spend hour-long car rides caressing them. Thatch driving, Marco on the passenger's seat - to have space for his long legs - and Ace right behind him. Marco would put his hand onto the side of his seat, and Ace would absentmindedly play with his fingers. He misses that so much. He tried to refuse to, but it's hard when Marco is so close again.

"We were too good for one another for it to be wrong."

"Well, that changed, didn't it?" He drags his hands out of Ace's reach. "You didn't sound like that the last time we spoke to one another!"

Not yesterday. Six years ago. A date Ace will never forget. Branded into his soul. He turns from Marco to control his breathing without having to look into his - rightfully - angry eyes. He tries to hide that he is hiding by asking, "do you have bandages?"

"No need. It's not bad."

"True, I'm just searching for excuses to touch your hands again." Attack is the best defense. He turns back to Marco, with his grin back in place, to see Marco's face fall. Critical hit, apparently.

"Stop, Ace. I can't deal with your bullshit right now. Don't do that!"

Ace opens his mouth, maybe to apologize, maybe to press on, he doesn't know yet, but his mobile rings, and he stocks. Home phone. Important people only. He drags it out of his coat pocket, and when the display shows 'Alm-uncle,' his insides clench.

"Gramps?"

"Deuce woke up. Akainu is guarding him, and he told me Deuce wants to speak to you as soon as you can. Sounded rather urgent."

Ace hangs up.

"You have a car here?"

Marco nods.

"Then let's go."


	22. Honor of friends. Husbands demand gay rights incident

Marco grips the steering wheel too tight as they drive off. Marco works - or used to work, he doesn't know yet if he will go back - at the hospital, so he knows the way by heart and doesn't need to concentrate on it. He is focused on Ace instead.

Ace is eradicating anxiety. Marco feels like with every red traffic light they have to wait in front of, he gets more restless. Even though he isn't even moving more body parts than his fingers, tapping on one another frantically. He stares ahead silently.

"I'm sure Deuce is fine," Marco says, with a long look at Ace when another red light allows for it.

Ace gives him a smile, but it's not the sunshine one. It's thankful and maybe a bit embarrassed. "You are right. Sometimes Deuce freaks out over kinda minor things."

"Your definition of 'minor' or his?"

"An objective one. He once freaked out because I used his car as a hotbox. 'Ace, you're gonna get us killed for a bit of weed. Ace, we're gonna be beheaded if they get us.'

Marco knows Ace too well.

"That wasn't in the States or anywhere near, was it?"

Ace makes a face in Marco's direction. "No. We were stranded in Iran for a short time. But like - lots of people drink and smoke there. They just hide it a bit better. It was fine."

"What were you doing there?"

"Meeting someone who we thought knew about Blackbeard's whereabouts, but it was false information.”

"I judge that it was a freakout worthy occasion,” Marco declares.

"Ugh. I'm sure you and Deuce will get along splendidly. You both like to calculate the possibility of a butterfly's fart in a fifty-kilometer radius."

"Don't know if I will like him, but sounds like he kept you alive for a long time."

"And you still have mixed feelings about that," Ace sighs.

They get to drive a few more meters through the workday afternoon traffic, before the same light they have been standing in front of jumps back to red. "The truce won't change the fact that I'm angry at you. But I never wanted you dead. What the fuck, Ace?"

"How long will you be angry?" he asks in a quiet voice.

Marco looks at him for another long moment. It still overcomes him sometimes, how beautiful he is. He kept his hair long, and Marco wonders if he still tugs it up into a bun when he cooks, or does sport. Marco just manages to not touch him. To not drag his finger down the bridge of Ace's nose, how he's done it a million times. How does one not fall back into old routines, when their relationship was so all-consuming?

Behind them, cars start honking, and they both jerk out of their moment. The light is green again. Looking at the road, Marco answers, "maybe when I understand it better. When I feel indifferent about the way you left. I don't know. It will take time."

Ace doesn't say anything. Not even about how it already has been six years. He turns away to look out of the window into the darkening streets.

Suddenly he snorts.

"What?"

"We are close to Luffy's school. I just remembered the first time we went there together."

Marco has to smile as well. He knows exactly what incident Ace is talking about. "That was pretty good, wasn't it?"

Ace turns to Marco so that Marco can see his grin. "The best."

That had been in sommer when Ace was sixteen and Luffy thirteen. On that day, Ace didn't have a shift in the gas station, so the two of them went to the gym.

Marco was spotting Ace while bench pressing. Ace's arms were shaking, and Marco was ready to grip the bar if signaled, but Ace wasn't one for giving up fast. His determination never wavered as he took on new challenges on his way to being able to lift 'at least as much as Marco.'

His shirt was drenched in sweat. The first time Marco had seen him without a jacket, he had been shocked to realize that Ace had a tattoo. It served as a reminder of all the layers and secrets Ace was still protecting fiercely, that Marco had no idea about. Now his arms were bare. The tiny scars on the inside of the left one weren't as prone as they had seemed to be when Marco had only just discovered them. The focus lay more on the 'ACE' tattoo that had gotten lots of laughs and questions because of its crossed out typo. Ace gave different answers, ranging from, “it's a homage to the dyslexic tattoo artist” “to, "that's the way it's written in my birth certificate - it's correct, what do you mean?”

He also wore a red beaded necklace that Marco had only seen glimpses of before. Marco was pretty sure he got an honest answer when he asked about it.

"It belongs to Dadan, my foster mother - kind of. I stole it when we left so that she had a reason to be mad at me even after I wasn't there anymore." ...Maybe not completely honest.

Ace ended his set with a groan, and Marco helped him sit up. "I'm gonna do one more set with five more kilogram."

Marco rolled his eyes at him. Ace had a bit of a 'too much' gene. Marco was readying himself for an argument about that, but then Ace's phone chimed, and, instead of back down on the bench, he got up to collect it from his bag. Marco watched him answer it, he couldn't explain why, but he already felt like something was wrong.

"Hello?"

Ace's eyebrows furrowed as he listened. He suddenly turned to Marco with an alarmed expression. "No - I am the legal guardian. Do not call Monkey D. Garp.” Pause. A worried look at Marco. “Is he ok? - Yes. Could we talk about that in person?"

"I can be there in thirty minutes. Please tell him I'm on my way."

He hung up and made a very rude gesture at the screen.

"What happened?"

"Luffy attacked a classmate with a burner in chemical class. They want to suspend him for a week at least, maybe throw him out. They don't know yet."

Marco picked up his bag. "Let's go then."

They made their way to the changing rooms and redressed quickly. "So I assume Garp made sure you are named as the legal guardian in the way he made sure you two could come to the US. But will that hold up if they try to verify it?"

"I don't know. I guess I'm gonna have to act a bit. Make sure I seem like one responsible adult and shit. They can't call Gramps in; he's gonna punch us until we are humanized apple puree."

They shared a hopeless look. "I can come in with you if you feel like that would help?" Marco offered.

"Yeah. I think that could work."

They hurried to Marco's car and arrived in front of the school twenty minutes later. Ace was about to leave the car, to just march in when Marco stopped him. "Wait a second. The way what you told me sounded, you gonna have to do a lot of bootlicking. You ready for that? - No insults, no screaming."

"I'm shit at that and we both know it."

Marco took Ace's baseball cap from his head. "Maybe open your hair. And take my jacket. The tattoo does not exactly say, 'I wait with home-cooked, organic-only dinner, and hire clowns for birthday parties, where everyone who says three swear-words gets expelled."

"White people," Ace sighed and shook the tie out of his hair.

They exited the car and gave each other a once over. "How do I look?” Ace asked and pushed the too long sleeves of Marco’s jacket back up. “Can I blend in with the soccer moms?"

"Very respectable. A bit like the Kyle version of common sense, being held together by coffee and mindset-mentor motivation podcasts, but I suppose that's what we are going for."

"Great, then let's go."

Luffy's school was a rather ugly block of cement, and Marco got a tiny war flashback when the smell hit him. All schools secret the same smell like shoes, bleach, and dirty laundry, Marco thought. Why Luffy spent his time here on his own choice wasn't only a mystery to Ace.

They followed a sign to the headmaster's office, and Ace knocked on the door before Marco had even started to collect himself.

"Portgas D. Ace?"

The woman in the door was younger than Marco had thought her to be. Her makeup was flawless, and her hair in a ponytail as strict as her stand. Her gaze was hard, but not unfriendly.

"Yeah. I'm here to get my brother."

"Gion Momousagi. Headmistress." She looked Ace up and down. "You seem younger than I expected."

"I’m 19, and so do you," Ace replied.

A look into Gion's face told Marco that the humanized apple puree future had just etched closer in the realm of all possible outcomes of this day. Gion had straightened and held her head even higher. This would not end well.

"And you are?" Gion asked Marco. Her jawline was sharp, and she didn't seem to find enjoyment in being forced to look up to be able to look Marco in the eyes.

"I'm-"

"My husband!" Ace fell into his words.

"Your husband?" She asked, and that was good because Marco would have also liked an explanation.

"Yeah, he is Luffy's other guardian. Not officially, yet, but like...soon," Ace finished weakly.

God damn it, thought Marco before giving Gion his most charismatic smile. "My fiance is getting ahead of himself." He offered her his hand. "Dr. Marco Newgate. We aren't married yet, but I am part of the family, and Luffy is as much my responsibility as it is his." And he slung his arm around Ace's shoulder. This was ridiculous, but maybe it was better than getting Garp involved. If they could pull this off.

Gion caught herself fast. "In that case, please come in."

She turned on her heels, posture still ramrod straight, and entered her office. As soon as she was out of sight, Marco gave Ace a questioning look. Ace shrugged. "I panicked. She is scary," he whispered.

“And you thought the best technique for tackling that would be by saying that I groomed you into marriage? She was supposed to think you are a reasonable adult, not a teenager playing house.”

“I made myself older, and you introduced yourself as a doctor: We’ve got this. Piece of cake.”

They didn’t have time to discuss it. Marco groaned, "well, then let's do this. Honey."

The office wasn't big, but the large windows let the sun float in. It could have been rather homey if there would have been anything just remotely personal lying around. Not even abstract paintings decorated the empty walls.

"Your brother and his fiance are here, Luffy," Gion announced.

Luffy sat in a chair in front of the desk, looking rather bored until his gaze found Ace's.

"Hi, Ace." He grinned as carefree as ever. Marco just couldn't not admire him for his attitude.

"Luffy," Ace got to him in three quick steps and pressed his hands onto his shoulders in relief. "You’ alright?"

"Yes. Can we go home? It's dull here."

Gion closed the door behind herself as a loud indication that no one would go home anytime soon. "Please sit down," she said in a chipped tone.

Marco and Ace sat down to Luffy's left.

Gion settled into her office chair. "So, I called you here to talk about Luffy's behavior. Not only of today but in general."

Ace was already biting onto his lips to not say something back. In his opinion, he was the only one who could say mean things about his brother.

"Luffy does not seem to understand authority. He doesn't grasp the rules of when he is allowed to talk and when not. I'm not saying that he has bad intentions. Until today he never showed any signs of violence or malcontent, but he has been a distraction to his classmates since he joined. I have also been told by his class teacher that he brought a photo of alcohol to school after getting the task to bring a picture of what is most important to him."

"I already explained that. It stands for brotherhood. It's about Ace and-"

"I wasn't done, Luffy. This is exactly what I mean."

"But-"

"Mr. Portgas, I understand from some of Luffy's comments that your upbringing was...unconventional. But if Luffy wants to stay in this school, he is gonna have to learn what respect means."

Ace contemplated for a second, then said, "my brother isn't one to treat people without respect. This is about etiquette. This is about you not feeling validated in-"

Marco kicked Ace’s leg under the table. "What Ace means is that Luffy has not experienced the rules of a classroom ever before. Luffy, in general, is always happy to learn new things, and he isn't one to harm others on purpose."

"Only that he did today."

"What exactly happened?" Marco asked.

"A few classmates told their chem class teacher later. Luffy attacked his seatmate after a short conversation between them. Apparently, they weren't even fighting. It happened for no visible reason. His seatmate has a severe burn on his hand. It might even scar. Both refuse to talk about the incident."

"Luffy?" Ace asked.

"I'm not saying," Luffy answered.

"Could you tell Ace, Luffy?" Marco asked. "And then Ace can make sure that we clear this up, without anyone else coming to harm?"

Ace and Luffy shared a look, then Ace leaned downwards to him so that Luffy could whisper into his ear.

"Yeah. Mhm. Ok: Got it.”

Ace came back up, gave Marco a look, and then shifted his gaze to the Headmistress.

"We aren't saying."

Marco thought that humanized apple puree prepared by Monkey D. Garp's fist would be mostly made out of blood and intestines, and it would smell disgusting. He buried his head in his hands.

Gion looked at Marco, in a desperate search for normality. "In that case, I have to expel Luffy," she exclaimed defeated.

"What? But I want to go! I want to meet my friends tomorrow!" Luffy yelled.

"I can't have you in a classroom, if you decide to burn other pupils, Luffy!"

"It wasn't like that and I don't want to hurt anyone."

"I can't have a kid that behaves like this in school."

That Marco could latch onto. Even if it wasn't fair. "Do you think Luffy is misbehaving because of our lifestyle?"

"I would not go this far. I think his experiences have shaped him," Gion said, not realizing that she had walked into Marco's trap.

"So you think that a child raised by a gay couple will always turn out unmannerly?"

"What?" Gion asked alarmed. "No, I was talking about Luffy having never been in school before."

"Oh?" Ace questioned, leaning back in his chair, his head held sideways in an act of innocence. Thank god, he was so quick-witted, if he had to be. "To me, it sounded like you were criticizing our sexuality. Baby, can you believe she would say that? Why would she say that? I'm shocked." He leaned against Marco and hid his face in Marco's jumper.

"So can I come to school again tomorrow? I will be quiet when I have to," Luffy interrupted their little play.

"Uhm," Gion said, trying to gain ground again.

"Marco, baby, I can't believe we experience this kind of homophobia in a place that should be safe. And progressive." Ace even managed a few crocodile tears. Maybe their source was not left out laugher. The corners of his mouth were trying hard to not move up, but down.

"Yeah, downright traumatic," Marco said with a neutral face and tone, and Ace had to hide his face again until he could control his mimic.

"I want to go to school. Can I please come to school?" Luffy asked again.

"These stereotypes placed onto us."

"Can I come to school?"

"Doesn't this wake up long lost memories from a childhood in the closet, in a school system that would not have protected you?" Marco asked Ace. "Where institutionalized discrimination against LGBT Youth was overlooked as much as their needs, even though they are amongst the most vulnerable population in the school setting?"

"Can I PLEASE come to school?"

"Yeah, and it seems like nothing has changed. Don't you have a relative who is a journalist? I'm sure he'd like to cover this. This heteronormativity-"

"Can I come-"

"ALRIGHT!" Gion yelled. "Luffy, you are expelled for the week, then you can come again. Please - all of you - leave my office. Now!"

Ace stopped the crocodile tears immediately and gave her a sunny smile. "Great to get to know you. See you at Parents' day."

Marco and Ace made it to the car, but as soon as Luffy had closed the last of its doors they both scream-laughed.

"That poor woman," Ace howled.

"I can't believe that worked," Marco wheezed out between laughing fits.

"Hey, you two, what is so funny, and why did she say that Marco is your fiance? Why didn't you tell me you were getting married?" Luffy asked, and that made Ace and Marco laugh even more.

Marco hid his face in his hands as he almost cried. Ace was leaning with his head on the car's dashboard and shaking with laughter.

In a try to center himself, Marco gasped, "Luffy, why did you burn your classmate's hand?"

"Oh, that was just Zoro, and he asked me to. Kuina told him that her father will be in their Kendo fighting lesson today. Zoro said that she was a bit nervous about being beaten by Zoro. So Zoro asked me to burn his hand so that he can't fight - at least that's what Zoro told me. But I think he was the one who didn't want to lose to Kuina in front of her father. But I can't tell anyone who knows Zoro. That would be against our honor as friends."

Ace dragged his head from the car's dashboard back against the headrest, so that he could squint down at Luffy on the backseat. "Next time Zoro asks you to hurt him, please do it after class, okay? That stunt we just pulled won't work a second time."

"What stunt? I thought you two get married now? That would be so cool!"

Marco thought Ace would be embarrassed or deny it. But when his eyes locked with Marco's, his gaze was different from the teasing one Marco knew so well. He had never seen Ace wear this particular expression.

"Yeah, kinda," he said.

It was a joke.

Marco was sure of it.

* * *

"You know, that was the first moment where I thought that we could be more than friends," Ace says quietly.

The memory of happier times in this car feels so vivid, Marco can taste it on the tip of his tongue. But the presents looks different. "And see to where it brought us," he says in a sarcastic tone.

Ace looks truly hurt, and Marco doesn't care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that I didn't update last week, I'm battling with a MarcoAce one-shot at the moment, and I wanted to get that out of my system before continuing this story. TURNS OUT - not realistic!! Cause this one-shot is now 15 k words long and has still. no. end. in. sight. (softly: kill me)  
> Well, I'm working super hard on that, and hope to see you all there. it's gonna be a good one.
> 
> Hope you liked the chapter, I'm so happy about all the comments and kudos that I got so far and I'm hooked. gimme more! I crave validation like Gollum craves the ring.


	23. Deuce

Deuce knows it's Ace who is about to enter when he sees Akainu, who is guarding him, make a face as if he just smelled a bad fart and leave for the tiny floor and door to Deuce's hospital room.

"Portgas - and Marco Newgate? I thought you to be busy with other things," Akainu sneers as he opens the door. "Running after him again so soon? What does your wife say about that?"

They are still out of view.

Ace brought Marco Newgate. That's good. That means that Ace's constant monologue about Marco might at least change in its nature. Deuce couldn't have suffered through another hour of 'Marco hates me now, I made sure of it, but I miss him so much. I was so mean to Marco. I was horrible to Marco, and he doesn't deserve it. Do you think Marco will ever forgive me?'

"Bold of you to talk, when your ability to form connections to other people is about as developed as the one of the wifi signal in North Korea, you discount Joker. How about you swallow -"

"Ace."

"Marco, he-"

"No love lost between us. That's fine. We are here for other reasons."

Marco sounds like Deuce imagined him. Ace described him as a calm and considered person. No. That's just what Deuce deduced out of Ace's constant rambling, about how 'Marco is kinder than every other person in the whole universe, and so wonderful the world should hold its breath when he enters a room, blablabla.'

Ace talked so much about Luffy, Marco, and the Whitebeard family, Deuce feels like he already knows them. But then Ace described them as such special people, Deuce is kinda unimpressed when Ace and a tall, blond man behind him come into view.

The world does not hold its breath. Marco does not have a halo around his head, and his entry isn't followed by a choir. He is, in all fairness, a rather normal-looking man. Extremely high in stature. Muscular. One weird fucking haircut. His gaze is intelligent and finds Deuce's with interest, but Deuce doesn't have time to even attempt to smile at him before Ace blocks his view with a screamed, "Deuce!" and a jump up to his bed and around Deuce's neck.

Deuce is reminded of the reasons why he is in hospital as Ace shakes him through, and everything goes fuzzy at the corner of his eyes. Deuce missed him.

"God, damn it Ace - take you Octopus limps away, I can't breathe."

He makes a dramatic show out of sucking in air as Ace gets off of him. Ace grins, so it's worth it.

"Deuce, what happened? How badly are you hurt? What is Akainu doing here? Wh-"

"Ace," Marco says in the same quiet fashion as he did before, and Ace, somehow, miraculously, not only registers it but actually reacts to it. He shuts up.

Maybe Marco does deserve that choir.

"So you are Marco? You can't believe how satisfying it is to put a name to the face of all of Ace's stories. He doesn't shut up about you."

"Deuce," Ace hisses, but Marco laughs and stretches his hand out for Deuce to shake.

Deuce smiles and takes Marco's offered hand.

"I don't think I can live up to Ace's way with words - the positive ones at least. I hope I don't disappoint."

Deuce snorts. "There really weren't any negative ones."

"Deuce, I'm gonna make sure you won't leave the hospital for a while if you don't shut up. That was in a moment of panic."

"You talked about me in a moment of panic?" Marco asks Ace confused. Deuce feels like he has teased Ace enough and should probably help him out of this.

"Ah, I asked him to tell me some funny tales while we were imprisoned, you know? Just so we could think ourselves out of there. I learned quite a bit about all of you. It was - Wait. We don't have time for this." Deuce almost forgot the graveness of the situation he has to inform Ace about. Or more - he would have liked to forget. To just have this moment where he finally meets Ace's _Marco_. And gets to tease Ace with that. But ahead of him, of all of them, lies a conversation that will change the path of their future. A herald declaring trying times.

"Ace. We fucked up." This won't be easy. Finding words to slowly tell them the truth. This is too much of a bombshell to just blurt out.

"In general? I mean, yes, quite often. But this is specific, right?"

Oh, Ace. Still so lighthearted. But Deuce will have to take that away. He takes a breath. "Okay. So, you remember the ships from Cambogia to Spain?"

"The ones we spent about a year of our life on? Yes, Deuce. I do."

"We thought the destination was important. And the people on the ship."

"Yeah?"

"We didn't ask ourselves where the drugs they were shipping really came from."

"They were being produced in Cambodia? By one of Blackbeard's divisions. After we got out of Lafitte's prison, Gramps sent troops to deal with them. But they were already gone. Blackbeard must have warned them."

"Wrong," Deuce tells him.

Ace can't understand yet how serious this is. Deuce wishes he could keep him like this. Unknowing. Busy, mostly with Marco, and the threat of a dismantled Blackbeard in the background. He wishes he could give him this time, but the situation has drastically changed.

"When I got into Impel Down, I asked different people about Shiryu. About who he was working with. About what it was exactly, that he was doing."

"We know who he was working with? The drug division and Laffitte as his Liaison."

"Wrong. He was working for Laffitte, that's true. He was a middleman between Laffitte and the ones creating the drugs." Ace frowns. Deuce's sobriety is finally mirrored in his face.

"I got to Shiryu's cell. He knew I was coming for him. He almost killed me. I am only alive because of Whitebeard Mafia inmates that protected me. Before that, I asked if the rumors were true, and he verified what I heard others in there speak about." Deuce swallows. He wishes that it could stop being true if he would just stall it out. Ace and Marco stare at him with faces so intense, they must already have made some educated guesses.

"Shiryu was a middleman between Blackbeard and Donquixote Doflamingo."

"Doflamingo?" Marco breathes.

"It was Doflamingo's drug division who's deal we destroyed. Shiryu's last words to me, before he went all berserk, were that Donquixote Doflamingo swears revenge. And that this will be the end of you, Ace, and Whitebeard. Blackbeard is coming. But he isn't alone."

"They've made an alliance," Ace whispers.

"Yes. Do you have any idea how big the Donquixote mafia is?"

Ace shakes his head.

"About two thousand people," Marco says faintly.

"Ace. You are in danger. He thinks you are the one responsible. You are the trigger for Blackbeard's - and with that partly his - downfall. He says he is gonna come for Whitebeard's golden child that took his drug deal, and then Whitebeard himself!"

Ace is grinding down on the insides of his cheeks. That he doesn't want to hear it can't stop Deuce from at least trying to make him see reason. "You have to hide! We aren't prepared for this. This has grown over our heads way too fast. We need to win some ground."

Ace unlocks his jaw, and his eyes are determined when they find Deuce's. "This doesn't change anything! It still means that Blackbeard will come here for his revenge, and as soon as he shows his ugly head he is done for. I don't care about 2000 people more between us!"

"Listen here, hothead! You can't win this shit with being charismatic! You can't fuck yourself out of this situation. This is gonna be a carnage. If you let it be one. We need a plan, and we need time."

"Deuce is right," Marco judges.

Ace gives him a look. "Of course, you two would be on the same side of this. Of course."

He wants to jump down from the side of Deuce's bed, but Deuce catches his arm. "We will get Blackbeard's head. I promise. But we might have to go another route."

"We've been in hiding for six fucking years! You tell me I have to hide again?"

"I know this sucks."

"I thought we were fucking wining. Yes, this sucks!"

"Ace," Marco says, still calm. "If you die, Pops will fight Doflamingo to his own death. Your actions have a long trail of consequences. Don't forget that. Whatever you decide to do."

Ace doesn't look up to him. He is busy chewing on his cheeks again.

Deuce slings his arms around him and carefully drags him in. "Hey," he says softly. "I know this is not how we thought we would come back, but we still have a chance, right? We won't give up. We just need to come up with a new plan."

Ace nods and leans against Deuce. "Are you alright?" He asks, pressed against Deuce's neck. Over his head, Deuce sees Marco turn away from them.

"A concussion, a few broken ribs, I will live. And you? How are..," he gives Marco another look, "...things?"

Ace doesn't answer, which is actually answer enough. He just soaks up Deuce nearness for another few seconds, then he leans back and turns over to Marco. "We need to go to Moby Street and tell the others. Sergeant Pepper out there can inform my grandfather about all of this."

Akainu is in the room only a second later.

"I heard that! You haven't changed a bit. Your grandfather might have trusted you with the Blackbeard operation, but don't think for a second that Doflamingo Donquixote isn't a game-changer!"

"You've got something you want to say to me?" Ace asks. There is nothing left of the softness with that he had asked about Deuce's condition.

"You and your big words, Portgas! When you know you have people behind you."

Ace get's up and marches towards him. "This is ridiculous. Let's settle this outside and be done with it. This antipathy is childish and its reason in the past."

He leaves, Akainu right on his heels. Deuce is left alone with Marco, who looks at the spot Ace just disappeared from with a frown.

Fuck, did the news even reach Ace? On the level where they have to reach for Ace to reflect on them? Deuce prays that Marco doesn't let him ignore this, to run straight into danger. Would Marco do that? After everything that happened between them?

"Hey, Marco?" Deuce asks carefully.

Marco turns to him. His eyes hold a level of wisdom only achieved by those who have cared for and surround themselves with human beings for a long time.

"Make sure he is safe, okay? He told me some of the things that happened between you, and I get that you aren't his biggest fan at the moment. But he listens to you. Hell - I have never seen him shut the fuck up just because someone else was speaking. Not even with a gun against his head. He cares about your opinion, and he might even act according to that."

Marco's eyes are sad. He nods.

"And...Marco? He-" god, Deuce shouldn't meddle. But this is his best friend and the relationship he ran from to save it. Deuce knows that Ace won't talk about this, too afraid to hurt Marco's feelings. Marco should know. It might have an influence on how he sees Ace.

"He loved her. The idea of her. I mean, at first, he called me, drunk out of his mind, and screamed about it. 'Marco is gonna have a child. This was my man. This was supposed to be my future.' But when we were captured, he talked to me about her. How he wished he could meet her one day."

Marco seems to have stopped breathing.

"He was hurt badly. His hand was smashed and infected. I thought he would die if we wouldn't get medical help soon. But he just laughed and told me that he couldn't die without having experienced the world with that new little life in it. That he needed to at least see a picture of her. And that there were people who depended on his survival. The people who love him. The people he loves. And those who he has failed. He wanted to live to get things right."

Deuce looks into Marco's eyes and thinks he can find an echo of the love he must have once held for Ace. It makes him hopeful for the future, even if that future has gained another enemy.

"I know I'm asking for much, considering that this is Ace, and I know the timing couldn't be worse, but please. Please watch over him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well well well, the plot thickens! What do you guys think?
> 
> Thank you so much for all the comments and 100 kudos!!! If there are really 100 people reading this, that's batshit crazy, absolute insanity!


	24. Lies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all the usual warnings. Drug use. Ace + all bad choices one could make 4ever.  
> References to Harry Potter. Which might happen again, I still love the books, even though Rowling can go choke on a snitch.

Ace smokes another cigarette as he waits for Marco, leaned against Marco's car, in the darkening hospital parking lot. He thought Marco would be the one to wait for him, or maybe not, and just drive off without Ace, who the fuck even knows anymore. But Marco is nowhere in sight.

Ace doesn't want to have the time to think about things. He needs to stay in motion. Akainu managed to activate Ace's anger so throughout, he is fuming, and it feels a lot better than this veil of hopelessness the Doflamingo-situation brought on. He can't think about that.

Sooo...Damn Akainu! That fucking disgusting piece of forgotten pizza in the fridge that everyone touched once, to see if it looks still edible, and then avoids. Fuck him!

Akainu's words echo in his head. 'Do what your friends say and hide. This is too big for you, Portgas. You played your part.'

Ace won't. Ace won't go back into hiding. Six years of trying to get Blackbeard's disgusting, lice-infested head didn't do it, so it won't work now. Some Flamingo dude wants to fucking fight? So what?

God damn Akainu. His first words, Ace could stomach. Predictable. As predictable as attacking Ace for his lack of education and being not as competent as actual members of the police, which had followed.

But the last words.

'You still think you do this to get revenge for your cook friend? And not for selfish reasons? Whitebeard was ready to move on, and you made sure that this city will have a Mafia-war. You still think you can do any good? Just look at Marco, and you know the effect you have on people. Hide and get out before you make things worse.'

Ace had turned around wordlessly after that. No one but Dadan can beat Ace in a shouting match. But what if someone else says what Ace is thinking? He knows it isn't fair. He didn't try to get some Flamingo to feel threatened enough to attack. He isn't the reason why Marco is worse than ever. Yet - If he wouldn't have sworn revenge for Thatch. If he wouldn't have felt responsible. If Whitebeard wouldn't have given Ace a home so wonderful, Ace couldn't bear the trauma of it being destroyed. Then, yes, Thatch would have died. People would have mourned. And moved on. Ace might not have seen what was wrong with him and Marco, to the extent that he did, that night. He might have not broken up with him. Thatch's death was the catalyst for so much change in Ace's life.

Fuck Akainu for making him think about this. Fuck him! He looks like he comments 'delicious' under models' pictures anyway, while being the human embodiment of antique farm equipment. A pitchfork, maybe. That has been in use for generations. So dented and bent, it might look unique for a pitchfork, but that's also what makes it really fucking useless. GOD, Ace is mad.

"You're angry, and you want to vent."

Ace looks up. He's been so busy insulting Akainu in his mind, he didn't even see Marco come up to him. "Akainu is a dented pitchfork!" Ace growls, and offers Marco a cigarette. Marco accepts, so Ace also lights yet another one.

"So when we do our witch hunt for him, we stand in front of his house with torches and what?"

"Knives. The answer is knives. Machetes. Karambits. I don't care. We knife that bitch until his brain latches on to what his body adapted to years ago: He is and smells fucking dead. Really, he looks like he has been dead for two months, and it should happen. Otherwise, the universe is gonna throw some Final Destination shit at us, so he has to take one for the team and just. Fucking. Die. Not even Bob Ross could call this guy a happy accident. He is definitely an accident. But one depressing enough to make me want to call my mother on a Sunday, beg Jesus for forgiveness, and start a pilgrimage to this Japanese suicide forest. He has the mindset of a lobotomized crackhead old-school Nazi, and that he feels he can come up to me, just like this, just proves that he has brain sized nuts and a nut sized brain. He is a dementor. He sucks. He looks like a see-through bag of moldy carrot peelings, molded into the vague shape of a milk bottle with teeth, and one day I'm gonna microwave his pancreas for a midnight snack!"

Marco chuckles lightly. "I missed that."

Ace gives him a confused look.

"Do you remember how Thatch used to explain his love for hardcore metal?"

"Someone else does the screaming for me," Ace answers automatically. He thought about that often. Thatch had been such a happy guy, but sometimes even he had felt like he needed an outlet.

"It's like that with you and your anger. I can just go, 'yeah, what he said' in my mind, and that already brings me satisfaction."

Ace feels sick suddenly.

This is it. Right there. It got so normal for Marco to say, 'yeah, what he said' he forgot he could do emotions without Ace. This is the part of them that wasn't healthy.

Ace stubs his half-smoked cigarette out on the floor.

"Where were you? Did you talk to Deuce?"

"Not for long. I met a colleague on the way down."

They get into Marco's tiny blue car, and Marco is way too busy with checking if someone is behind them before driving backward...so.

"That was a lie."

"You can still tell?"

"Seems like it," Ace sighs and wishes Marco would have been able to know when Ace was lying back then. It would have made things easier in the long run.

"You are not pressing on?" Marco asks carefully neutral and stirs the car back onto the road.

"No. I keep that for occasions where I feel it's more urgent."

They drive off. Marco shivers and turns the heating up; he was never good with cold weather. He gets winter depressions that he tries to hide and deny, but Ace knew when to take days off in the gas station to make Marco go on long walks with him during the few hours of daylight that they had. Marco thrives in summer. For Ace, summer is a reminder of an incident he never got over.

Ace's first summer with the Whitebeard family served as space save enough for him to not be busy with being in survival mode, which meant that he could think. Sabo had died exactly two years ago, that summer. Ace couldn't deal with it. Still not. Summer brought on memories of Luffy, Sabo, and him, roaming through the forest. The most carefree time of Ace's life, and Sabo's last.

It was also that summer that Ace slowly felt himself form his desire for Marco. He observed his heart closely as it came up with that wish, like a scientist waiting for a chemical reaction. Ace had never felt like that, he didn't know what it was, and he was curious about what would happen with all of these unknown emotions. He didn't know that the outcome of this experiment would be the love story of his life.

Because he couldn't catalog his feelings, he, at first, didn't try to and just left them to be examined at a later time, when he'd understand them better. This was summer. This was about being out. Drunk. At a lake, or a park, and trying to forget about how summer had been about brotherhood.

That summer was when he was introduced to Ecstasy, and that was a love story of a different kind altogether. He started with only half a pill a night for a warm buzz, but it got more fastly.

He loved it. He loved the few hours of absolute bliss it gave him, only the aftermath was vile. It felt like a dementor sucking his soul out of his body. Like he would never be happy again. But it was worth it for the fantastic thoughtless hours it gave him.

He had more nightmares. Sabo's face, without eyes, yet still staring Ace down.

The good thing about that was that Marco would wake him up, after Ace's first whimper, and then lay his arm around Ace - So Ace started to imitate it on good nights. Turned around a bit, a few noises of distress, and without fail, Marco would wake up and comfort him. He didn't know why he started to crave that. But when he came home at night - still high - knowing that the crash would follow shortly, nothing was better than being next to Luffy and Marco. Ace knew that Marco was worried for him, so Ace started doing what he had promised he would do. And talked. At least about some things.

"I have a date tomorrow," Ace announced and dropped down onto the spider swing, next to Thatch and Marco.

Thatch opened his eyes to squint up at Ace. "Can you believe the youngster has more game than us, Marco?"

"You have a pompadour. So yes," Marco said, absently, flicking through pages in his book about some greek, dead poet.

"And your head is shaped like a fruit."

"Did you know that pineapples are just a collection of berries?"

"Marco," Thatch said in mock scandalisation, "you are supposed to clap back, not give me weird fun facts. Fucking nerd!"

"You two are hopeless. Anyway, this guy asked me out today, during my shift in the gas station, and he wants to eat dinner with me tomorrow. What do I do?"

"I mean, no offense, but eating is what you do best. You will be fine," Thatch said. "Don't wolf down your food. Don't fight him for the last chicken nugget, like you do with your brother."

"I need to clarify: A sophisticated, rich man wants to eat with me in a nice restaurant, and I grew up with fucking monkeys - I don't do eating on dates."

Thatch's eyebrows had slowly furrowed, and he sat up. "Ace, rich men are in their thirties or forties. When you said 'date', I thought you meant someone who is like sixteen or something."

"I tried that a few times, and it was shit." Ace grinned. "I guess I like my men like I like my whiskey."

"Trapped in a barrel for a few years without oxygen?" Marco asked, still mostly interested in his book.

"Twice my age."

"You say that like it's a good thing, baby protozoa."

"I don't need a moral lecture, Elvis, I need some advice on how to behave. Like - do I offer to pay my share? I'm fucking poor these days. The gas station isn't this much money."

"My advice is that you shouldn't go. Sounds like he is looking for a sugar baby kind of situation. That's fucked up. You are too young."

"Thatch. It's my decision. I'm making it. I'm old enough to do so and understand the consequences."

"You really are not. And about the money thing...You know that I am your boss, right? You could be a bit nice to me, and we can talk about that."

"Before I do that, I'm rather gonna do a second job."

Thatch laughed, "You could model for like - college website header pictures. You know, sitting on some grass with your group of international friends."

Marco looked up from his book for the first time. "I could actually see that working."

"You mean I'm not white enough to win them diversity plus points, and not black enough to make them feel threatened?"

"What the fuck," Thatch yelled.

"I meant that you can do that 'I enjoy living off of coffee and hummus and being in debt for years' smile. 'Bring it on. I love suffering, and my teeth are white' you know?" Marco laughed.

As an answer, Ace gave him exactly that smile and his middle finger. "You guys are no help. I came to my elders in search of their wisdom, and all you have to say is that my smile is ugly, and my taste in men is bad."

"Your taste in men is as appalling as whiskey, only that you can mix whiskey with cola to make it better, but I don't think that works with men," Thatch replied.

"But a whiskey cola makes a man look better," Marco mused and went back for his book, which meant that he didn't see Ace's and Thatch's expressions of silent suffering over such a Marcoesque weird comment.

"What I am getting out of this is that I will end alone if I act like one of you. Got it. Solid advice."

"Hey, I can fire you. I am your boss! Respect your elders!"

But Ace was already up and about.

* * *

Loving Marco had been easy. Not because Marco was the first person, outside of Garp and Luffy, who tried to save Ace, as Marco had feared in the beginning. But because Marco was the person who Ace trusted to not judge him for his decisions, or try to shape them to his liking. Marco never called out because he felt it was the socially expected thing to do. He made sure Ace felt like he had a choice. Which made him the first person that Ace wanted to be saved by. And loved.

"What?" Marco asks, and Ace realizes that he has been staring at him.

"Just in thoughts," he answers.

"About Akainu, or Doflamingo?"

"Neither. Just - Do you remember that date with the rich dude I went on in the first summer I was here?"

"Yeah? You came back and said he had the intellect of someone who's last two brain cells are stuck together by bubble gum."

"I can't believe you remember this."

"Me neither."

"I lied. He was intelligent and nice. He asked me about my life and shit, and I talked about you a bit too much, and he said, 'sounds like you are taken, I'm gonna drive you home after dinner,' and I was salty because I didn't even understand what he was saying. He got it, after about twenty minutes of talking to me, and I was just like 'the fuck are you on about?"

"Why are you telling me this now?" Marco asks, devoid of all emotions. But he can't hide from Ace. He feels conflicted. It's there - in the slight hitch of his eyebrows.

"Just...maybe there are still things left to unwrap from back then."

"I don't get what you are saying."

"If you would have known that I was lying. Would you have pressed on?"

Marco thinks about it for a long moment.

"Probably not. I would have thought you had your reasons and that you would talk to me if you wanted to. It's your choice, what you tell me and what you don't."

"So you are fine with being lied to?"

They arrive at Moby Street.

"No. Not in the great scheme of things. But in this scenario, I already know it is a lie. And probably not important?" He shrugs.

"If I would have told you a lie that was important?"

Marco stops the car and looks at Ace the way he looks at medical texts he hasn't worked through yet. "Where are you going with this?"

"Would you have pressed on if you would have known I just told you a lie? An important one."

"No. Do you have a point here?"

"No," Ace says. "I guess I don't."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate it. Next chapter is gonna be better


	25. Impact

Marco sits with Pops, Stefan, Izou, and Atmos in the main house's kitchen and drinks beer silently. It has been a long day. He broke up with his wife, destroyed a nursery with his ex, and learned that a two thousand manpower strong Mafia group is out to get them. He is allowed a drink. Even if that hangover, from two days ago, is still detectable in his bones.

"Fuck," Izou says, wipes a hand over his eyes, and seems to regret it immediately. His hair is done, and his make-up, until a second ago, was on point. The moments when he forgets himself enough to risk smearing it are the ones that catch him off guard to such an extent, they mean danger for all of them. If there is one thing Izou can't stand, then it is being surprised by something he didn't know could happen. Something he didn't see coming: They aren't prepared for Doflamingo. If Izou isn't, then no one of them is.

Pops has gotten solemn as well. Stefan has his head on his leg and looks up to him with serious eyes. "Doflamingo has been out for us for years. He isn't one to move unprepared. If he sees his window of opportunity right now, then it is because he truly believes Blackbeard and him, together, can overthrow us."

"Fuck," Izou says one more time. "I have to think everything through. This changes so much of the game. I can't see the forest for the trees anymore."

"We all need time to digest this," Atmos says gently. "I think we should talk tomorrow, with everyone. We should just...go to bed early. For once."

Marco finishes his bottle. His phone chimes and he fishes it out of his pocket. It's a text from Ilma, saying that she has arrived at her parents safely. Marco feels guilt for not even thinking about her over the last half of his day. He broke up with his wife, and yet his mind is occupied with so many other things. How disgusting that he is mainly happy about how he doesn't have to think about her right now. "Fuck," Izou repeats. Indeed.

He texts Ilma that he is glad she made it and wishes her a good night.

'Are you with your family?' She sends.

'Yes, about to turn in early.'

'Is Ace with you?'

...What? It already feels like such a long time ago that he spoke to her about Ace, when in reality, it has only been a few hours. He is pretty sure he didn't say more about Ace than that he was back in the States. Nothing about his importance to Marco. Why would she ask him that?

'Not right now. Why?'

'I met him when I was about to leave. He must have waited for me. He is nice.'

Marco hits the call button. Izou gives him his lynching 'I will find out what you are up to' glare as he gets up from the table to leave for the garden.

Ilma accepts the call. "Hey," she says, and it sounds incredibly soft.

"Hey," Marco breathes. His voice hangs like smoke in the air. He knows he has to ask, but he doesn't know if he wants to hear the answer. Ilma waits him out patiently.

"Soooo," Marco starts and licks his lips. Rubs his cold fingers together. Makes a few more steps in the direction of the spider swing. "You talked to Ace?"

"Yes," she says. Like it's no big deal. "He waited outside for me and kind of - jumped in front of the car. We talked a bit. I think I get why you never told me about him."

"Yeah?" Marco asks, and his voice doesn't sound like his own.

"I suppose it would be hard to describe him. He has this - energy."

Marco knows what she is talking about. Of course, he knows. Ace is passionate about everything he does. He once told Marco that he has to be because of his narcolepsy. That he would simply fall asleep if something didn't occupy his mind completely. Marco didn't tell him, but he hadn't believed it. Ace's passion was more his big fuck you to a world that had mistreated him. His idea of freedom. If you live life without regrets, you can't do things you don't support one hundred percent.

"That's not the reason. I couldn't have described his impact," Marco says. 

"I guess that's the result."

'Yeah', Marco thinks. 'You are way too right about that.' Ace's impact on him, the impact of the break-up - It had hurt so much because he was losing not only Ace but also Ace's energy that he had benefited from. Life without Ace, after he had known him, had felt like losing the ability to see color. All was the same, all functioned as ever, but the beauty of it was gone.

He thinks of Ace, under a bright morning sky. It had been pink and _so_ bright and breathtakingly beautiful, but not even close to Ace's smile. God, that day. That fucking day. Thinking about that will never not hurt.

"What did he want from you?" He asks, to center himself in the present.

"I think for once he wanted to give me the chance to talk about you with someone who knows you. I can't even tell you how good it felt to talk smack about you."

Marco can't help it, he has to grin. "Ah, did you know? Did you talk about nasty habits I have or something?"

"Yes, actually. Kinda. And swapped strategies on how we used to deal with them. He..." She swallows. "He talked to me. About our baby. About what she meant to him. He told me so that I would see the positive impact her life had on him. It was nice of him - but it - I don't know. It just left me wondering how much stronger that impact would have been. If she would have lived. If people would have said about her that it was an indescribable one."

"Wouldn't you?" Marco asks quietly, and she stocks.

"Yes, you're right."

"One of Ace's friends told me the same today."

"How do you feel about it?"

"I haven't thought about it yet."

She laughs. "This is exactly what Ace and I were gossiping about. How you won't talk because you don't know what you feel."

Marco knows that that's his weak point. Ilma and Ace both, the two most important relationships of his life, have told him so. Ilma thought it was irritating, and she missed some warmth. She said that it felt like running against a wall to try to make Marco talk.

Ace had accepted it. Not talking had been fine with Ace: He had his ways of getting to Marco in the end. Not showing emotions in any way hadn't been fine - Ace had gotten mad and started fights with Marco, and he knew him and all his pet peeves too well to not have Marco lash out, sometimes. Not with emotions, but with words dump enough to make Ace start laughing and call Marco an Idiot, and everything was good again.

But it hadn't been good.

"I just wanted to tell you that I'm glad he is there for you. In whatever way you need."

Oh, Marco doesn't like the implication of this. Ace is not some good Samaritan.

"Did Ace tell you why we broke up?"

"He said he wasn't good for you anymore."

Of course, he would. Bastard. "The way Ace left me. It wasn't pretty."

Marco can't describe how ugly it was. Can't find the words. He never managed to when his family asked. He can't even tell Ilma now. His mouth just wouldn't work with him if he were to try it. Because it always blocks up once those last words echo through Marco's head.

Don't think about it.

"How is your family? How are they dealing with this?"

"Praying. They are dealing with it by praying. To be honest, it's comforting. They believe that she is in heaven now and it's nice to kinda - wallow in their faith."

"Should I get you a cross for Christmas?"

"If it gets this far, it is your duty as a husba- friend. As a friend. To come here and list me all the horrible things the church has done. I expect charts and diagrams with years and body counts."

"I will come in like one of the horsemen of the apocalypse and bring tales of crusades and violence."

"I knew you had my back in this. Thanks, Marco. I'm gonna hang up now and go to bed, okay? It's been one exhausting day."

"Goodnight. Call me if you... you know. Think it would help."

"I will. Goodnight."

She won't. Because Marco isn't helpful with this.

Marco takes the last meters to the spider swing, drops down onto in, and shivers. It's the middle of October. Winter is almost there, and it is hateful. He finds a cigarette in his pocket and lights it. He had been so ready to stop the occasional cigarette he smoked at parties when her due date had arrived. Now he is back to it being a regular occurrence.

Izou opens the living room's sliding door and marches towards Marco, through the garden. His silhouette gets closer, and Marco hears him cursing on his stumbling voyage through the dark flower beds.

"Fucking damn it, Marco, you had to chose this fucking swing for your reflection and breaking apart place? Can't we do this in front of a fire? Or a ball bath or some shit?" He complains as he reaches the swing.

Marco loves him so much. And even a bit more when he hands him his coat. Marco puts it on and quivers.

"How are you holding up?" Izou questions.

"Well, we have about 2000 new problems. So great."

"Fuck."

"Theme of the week."

"Marco. No sarcasm for a second, ok? How did things go with Ilma?"

"We broke up."

There isn't much to say about that. Izou accepts his answer. He has known Marco for years, and it's these moments where it shows.

"And how well, or not well, are you doing with Ace?"

Marco doesn't answer. He doesn't know.

"Cause like. Can it get worse? I'm asking this in honesty. Is Ace making things better or worse for you?"

Marco shakes his head and takes another cigarette drag.

"Give me one."

"You haven't smoked since-" That night. A bunch of firsts and lasts happened that night.

"Yeah, well, it's this kind of week," he says and stretches his hand out for Marco's cigarette pack.

"You made me promise you that I'd never give you one again."

"Fuck! I don't like feeling stupid, and this is the second time tonight. Should have seen this coming!"

"How could you have ever predicted Doflamingo?"

"I was talking about the day I would need a cigarette again. Pretty naive to think it wouldn't come."

"I'd call it optimistic, maybe."

"That's the same in our way of life." Izou gives him a guilty look. "Sorry. I didn't mean to make this about me."

"It is not only me who is allowed to feel like shit."

From behind them, they hear laughter. It's Ace's laugh, and it still has its effect on Marco.

Ace went to reconnect with the Second Division in their house. He spent yesterday with them, after Marco's and his talk, and was happy about how little their line up had changed. The Second Division was a big part of what made Ace accept them all as his home. He is good with responsibility. When it's not himself he has to look after.

"He doesn't seem to feel like shit. Impressive," Izou muses.

"He was upset earlier. But overall - no. It's so surreal how grown up he is."

"He grew into his skin. Became more comfortable with his place in the world and what that means for him. It was prone to happen; we saw the change."

Did they? Marco doesn't know anymore. Seeing Ace now makes him question what he thought he understood about him.

Ace comes over through the garden. He doesn't see them on the swing, he walks past them. The stairs up to the veranda are dark, but Ace knows exactly where they start. For someone who wouldn't know, it would look like Ace lives here. Has been living here. He is familiar enough to know his way in the night. It's like a vision in a forgotten time. Ace in that summer, when he got familiar with all of them.

The Whitebeard family has a tradition of organizing one big feast every summer, for all of them and their associates to attend to. That year, the summer was hot and humid, and Marco enjoyed every second of it. Besides making party adjustments. Sometimes it sucked to be the leader of the First Division.

The evening before the party, Marco flopped onto his bed with a groan.

Ace didn't even look up, from where he sat at Marco's desk, with Marco's laptop, watching some rap music video. It had become quite normal, over the last week, for Marco to be done with the day by early evening. Managing the feast was frustrating; Marco liked it more when he could organize deals with other families. That was at least not boring while occupying all of his free time.

Ace had been a great help with the organization. He thought himself into the problems, (people buying alk and just pre-drinking, with the budget that had been meant for food, SECOND DIVISION!!), Marco ran into and tried to solve them in creative ways. Marco was incredibly glad for him - when he wasn't listening to bad music in Marco's room when Marco just wanted to sleep.

"Do you even like rap music?" He asked. "You never sing along, you don't even move. We need a ten-meter radius safe zone when you listen to rock."

Ace hit pause and turned to him. "You are having a shit day, aren't you?"

"I am having a shit day," Marco replied. "How could you tell?"

"For starters, you aren't usually irritated by music of any kind. Or if you are, then you don't voice it."

Marco dragged his head up in alarm to look at him properly. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to let it out on you."

"You didn't." Ace gave him a long and hard look. "I'm gonna tell you why I listen to rap music. I'm only telling you because you had a shitty day. You are not allowed to laugh. Got me?"

"I won't laugh about the reason you listen to some type of music, however hard that task shall be."

"Eat me. Okay - You know how I grew up in Brazil, in a village, by the forest?"

"Yeah."

"So. We had a television that worked most of the time, but no internet and not a lot of foreigners to speak about the wild world with. The first time I used the internet was in Caracas, and I learned quite a lot. I came to America prepared: I knew what a Smore was, and how to aggressively argue my point however wrong it might be. I thought that was enough to not stand out, you know. I was wrong. I made one fucking big mistake. I was only here for a few days, and it bit me in the arse. I was talking to a guy I had met that very night. He was handsome, nice hands, and beard - And he - I don't remember why, but he was talking about his dream catcher. How he had had it for many years and believed it was his good luck charm. Now, I had heard about dream catchers, and I thought I knew what the fuck they are. I was very, very wrong. So I said, 'dude? You used the same dream catcher more than fucking once? Ew, that's disgusting."

"Wait," Marco said. "What did you think dream catchers are?"

"All in time, listen to the story. He said, 'what do you mean? What do you do with your dream catcher? It's not like they can catch a limited capacity.' And I was like, 'Whoa, dude. Is that some kind of hippie recycled shit I didn't get before? Is that really how you Americans do this? I guess it's a cultural thing? Like not using toilet paper in Nepal and just never touching people with your ass-hand. Also, I don't use 'dream catchers', because my dreams are never wet enough for that to be a problem."

"What?" Marco asked.

"That's what he said. And then he sat me down, with this face like he had just experienced something like accidentally holding hands with a stranger after grabbing the same pole on the train. Or someone getting the 'avoid contact at all coast handshake' out a hug attempt. Like this face of trying to survive awkwardness that is the equivalent of a plane crash. Where it's so bad, they feel pity for you. And he explained to me that dream catchers are there to catch nightmares and not, as I thought, condoms you put onto your dick each night so that you can catch your wet dreams to not spill on the sheets."

Marco was not allowed to laugh, Marco was not allowed to laugh, Marco was not allowed to laugh!

"Oh, alright. Knock yourself out."

Marco exploded. He hadn't laughed like this since college.

"To wrap the story up: I did not get to catch that guy's dream - If you know what I mean. And I also learned that I never want to feel this stupid again. And the best way to know what you have to know, to not seem stupid in a new county, is to know what people rap about."

Marco couldn't stop laughing. He felt tears stream down his eyes and his sides started to hurt. Ace observed him with a half-amused, half resigned face.

Izou opened the door to their room in concern, and his eyes found Marco in disbelief. "What did you do to him, Ace, honey? I haven't heard him laugh this loud since Thatch tried to buy a giraffe on the black market and got a Playmobil one for a few thousand."

"Just told him a story to brighten up his bad day."

Izou gave him an impressed look, and they exchanged some more words that Marco didn't hear because he started to laugh again. "Some kind of hippie recycles shit! Did you think he was washing his dream catcher every night to be smooth and sailing for the next one? And the outcome is that you now study rap music??"

He flopped back onto the bed for the second time that evening. But this time, all frustration was forgotten.

Ace jumped up then onto him, and smashed a pillow over Marco's head.

* * *

"Ace used to be good for me. I don't know what happened then, or what is now."

Izou takes Marco’s hand, with the cigarette, and forces it to his mouth to take one deep drag.

"I think you will find out soon."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think I can do a chapter a week anymore for a while. I'm applying to universities, and I'm making an art portfolio for that. I'm gonna try, but updating every second week seems more realistic. Sorry for that. (Buuuuut next chapter will have some MarcoAce art, at least, so there is that.)
> 
> ONE PIECE MANGA SPOILER CHAPTER 998 AHEAD
> 
> Oda got me crying over the drawn silhouette of a fucking cowboy!??!! if we get a flashback with him, I'm gonna spit. Also how the fuck can it still hurt so much after 10 years??


	26. Your back to me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, this is a hard one. Hardest chapter so far, I think. And designed to be uncomfortable. I thought about toning it down, but then Oda gave us chapter 999 this morning and I haven't been the same since. And frankly: I want you all to suffer with me. So have this chapter of shit is going the fuck down. 
> 
> Warnings: Self-harm. Discussion of drugs. Underage.  
> But also and most importantly: Sexual manipulation attempt. I think it's finally time to discuss the underage part of this story when it comes to Marco and Ace. Nothing is gonna happen between them before Ace is 18, or 19. And with 'nothing' I mean they ain't gonna kiss, they ain't gonna fuck. But then we have chapters like this, where there is sexual energy between them when there really shouldn't be. This is why underage is a warning for this chapter anyway.

Ace finds Pops in the kitchen, where he drinks his tea. Stefan, at his side, is failing hard at not falling asleep. Atmos must have left for bed already. "Do you remember all those times I beat you at chess?" Pops asks as Ace sits down across from him after scratching Stefan behind the ears.

"How could I forget that. It was infuriating."

"You got worse and worse at it because you got into our matches thinking that you would lose, and it made you pre-mad. But then you accepted that, for now, I was better, and you slowly learned."

"Didn't beat you once, though. Why are you thinking about that?"

"I'm thinking we might have to accept that Doflamingo has the upper hand right now. We need to learn him."

"He doesn't know us! He doesn't know what he is going against," Ace answers with passion.

"Do not take him on lightly, son. He is a dangerous man. Maybe more dangerous than what Blackbeard has become."

Ace can't argue because he doesn't know. Maybe Pops is right, and they do have to learn. "Doflamingo crash course for dummies. Hit me with it."

"Doflamingo Donquixote was born rich. His parents turned their backs on that way of life, and Doflamingo never recovered from that. He and his brother together built up the Donquixote mafia family. They started with gambling. Made sure the teams they needed to win were winning by buying players. They got into drugs. Steroids, mostly. It is said that when they truly got their family going, Doflamingo shot his brother Corozan to truly take over."

"He killed his own brother?! Is this like - mafia asshole requirement?? I should have read mafia terms and conditions! Does no one have manners anymore?! I really thought we all had more honor."

"Since we are already talking about honor - how was your meeting with Akainu? Marco only mentioned that you ran into him."

At that moment, Marco and Izou step in. Their faces are red, and they both look frozen. Have they been outside, in the garden, this whole time? Ace should have seen them then. He is letting go of all of his six years of paranoia since he got home. He hates that he has to get back into that mindset and watch his steps and his surroundings.

Marco, fastly, wishes them a good night, not meeting anyone's eyes. He turns and gets up the stairs before Ace can say anything back. Izou stands still, frowning at the spot he disappeared from. He pulls himself together and turns to them. "I don't think he is dealing well with all of this. Ace. Be careful with him, okay? You know him: His heart is soft as dog shit." Ace gives a serious nod to that statement. "I'm also gonna go to bed. Good night, Pops. Good night Ace, honey." He gives Ace a kiss to the temple. Ace smiles at him as bright as he can, and Izou cooes. "I missed that smile." He kisses Ace's other temple. "And now, good night." Ace missed him more than words could describe.

"So. Akainu," Pops says after Izou has closed the kitchen door to not let the cold air from the hallway in.

"He was being his mean self. Akainued around for a while, so I thought we could - maybe not make up, but at least be civil if we talk about this? But he just insulted me for a bit, and then I fucked off because listening to him is about as healthy PCP."

"What did he say?"

"Blablabla, you ain't no help, and you don't know anything. You never went to school, mimimi. Your family should forget about you; you don't do any good for anyone, just look at Marco." Ace tries to frame it like a joke, or like it doesn't matter to him, but he fails horribly.

Stefan starts to snore, and Pops gently pets him. "You know that has never been true, right? You do good for this family, and we do good for you. That is what it is about, son. And for Marco - I doubt you could be bad for him. Don't let Akainu guide your steps. Do what feels natural. You coming back now was the right choice."

"Thanks, Pops. I think I needed that."

"You have always been a good kid. And a good son. I'm so glad to have you back!"

Ace gets up to hug him. "And you are the best dad. Crème de la crème of fatherhood."

Pops laughs. "Ah, I felt some uncertainty. I have let you run alone on your mission for such a long time."

"It was my choice, and you respected it."

Like he always did. Ace had a hard time building up a relationship with Pops. He didn't know what Pops was to him in the beginning. He couldn't call him 'Pops', and he sure as hell wasn't a 'Mr. Newgate', so, copying his brother, Ace went for 'Banana-brain', for the first years. Pops had accepted that with humor.

"Go to Marco, Ace. Make sure he is alright, yes?"

Ace steps out of their hug and nods. "Night, Pops." It's so natural to call him that now. He is Ace's father. The only one Ace could ever accept.

Ace steps into their- no. Marco's room, an hour later. His hair is still wet from the shower, and he is dripping onto the floor. So many nights where this was their routine. Ace coming in, after a long night out, showering, and then falling into bed right next to Marco.

Marco is lying on his back, staring at the ceiling and the smell of smoke clings to the room. Marco __hates__ indoor pure tobacco smoking. Ace gets over to the bed with quick, resolute steps. Marco can stare at the ceiling all he wants; Ace will get to him one way or another.

Marco doesn't react when Ace sits down next to him.

Ace get's under the cover, and all Marco does is turn on his side, away from Ace.

Checkmate in one turn.

Jackass.

"That's not fair. That is really not fair," Ace says in a faint voice.

Marco doesn't answer. Ace stares at his back and feels all the emotions unlock, which always run on the loose when he looks at someone's back turned to him. He hates this. He hated this. So much. Marco only did this to him once. Slept with his back to Ace. That was the day in summer when the Whitebeard Mafia family fest happened.

The fest had been great. Luffy, who had summer break, and Ace had gotten up early to help with the preparations in the kitchen. In Luffy's case, that meant 'testing', if all the food they would serve tasted good, and in Ace's case, it meant cleaning after Luffy, which wasn't too different from regular days. Thatch was not stressed, which had become a rarity under the Whitebeard siblings in that week, so Ace and Luffy spent their time with him gladly because he wasn't prone to snap.

The rest of the preparations went as smoothly as the circumstances of being a mafia house and half a zoo at the same time, thanks to Thatch, could go. Rakuyo was making up a plan on how to simulate a power failure that would only hit Blamenco's computer, so that he, too, would be part of their fest instead of just sitting in front of his absurd websites. Namur sat on Fossa's shoulders and tried to hang up paper chains in the cherry tree, while Stefan chased after the chain's second end. Haruta and Blenheim ran after the raccoons, to put them in their long-abandoned cages, after they had managed to throw over the grill, Whitebeard himself had set up, one too many times.

Ace saw only glimpses of Marco as he ran from task to task.

By midday, the fest truly started, and it was perfect. Luffy had invited Zoro, Nami, Usopp, and Vivi, his friends from school. It took them about five minutes to free all of the animals of Thatch's exotic pets phase to play with. The makeshift dance floor definitely was a sight to behold. Thatch grabbed Izou for a slow waltz, while next to them, Luffy, Zoro, and Vivi danced, with a snake around all of their shoulders. Ace laughed wholeheartedly at that. Even better was that Marco chimed in. The stress of the last week forgotten.

A bunch of people had brought smaller children, who all enjoyed getting their face painted by Izou, and then dragged Ace over as well.

"Okay, okay. What do you think would suit me?" He asked them and smiled. They were younger than Luffy had been when he and Ace first met, but Ace still felt a pang of nostalgia while looking at them. Luffy wouldn't be a child but a teen, soon. Ace was equal parts excited and sad about that.

"A butterfly. Have one like me!" One of the tiny girls shouted into his ear.

"A pirate beard!" Another one demanded.

"Butterfly, a big and pink one."

"Yeah!"

Ace gave Izou a questioning look. "You think I look like a pink butterfly kind of guy?"

"I think I could truly capture your soul with that. You will cry tears of joy when I'm done."

"Go for it. Or - I have a good idea. How about a butterfly tree? What if I was a butterfly tree, and I had like a few tiny butterflies on my cheek?" Ace tried to negotiate; that would be better than a face full of makeup.

He saw the moment that Izou's creativity sparked in his eyes, and he started to mix colors.

Ten minutes later, the kids were going crazy for Ace to look at the result of Izou's work in the mirror.

"Oh, whoah, Izou! You should have been an artist!"

He had painted a tree branch over the left part of Ace's face. Flowers and three tiny, pink butterflies sat on his temple and cheeks. It was stunning. Ace wasn't a fan of looking in the mirror, usually. But this was nice.

"Thanks, honey," Izou said with a proud grin.

"You do know that I have to wash this away at the end of the day, right? That's downright tragic."

"Ah, _making_ art is the whole point. I'm like one of these monks that spend ages drawing mandalas in the sand, only to destroy them," he said wisely.

Marco roamed past them, a happily screaming toddler on his shoulders, and gave them his goofiest smile when he saw Ace's face. Totally worth it!

The day turned into evening, and for Ace that brought the wish for Ecstasy. But he had taken too much in too short a time. His tolerance had gotten way too high, while his level for bearable negative emotions sank. Which made him want to use more Ecstasy, to feel good again. He couldn't this evening. Not with Luffy around.

When a warm night, full of fireflies and guitar sounds, settled around them, they made a campfire. The kids made campfire bread, and Luffy gave them all a scare when he almost fell into the fire. Marco caught him before anything could happen, and Ace felt that weird feeling in his chest again. It overcame him often when he saw Luffy interact with Marco. Like his ribs were trying to open up, like a blooming flower at dawn. He wasn't sure if he liked it.

The night turned into early morning. The last of the children were brought to bed and switched for heavy alcohol. Ace, Thatch, Marco, and a Whitebeard associate called Doma, ended up in one very drunk pile on the spider swing. Their second joint was going around, and Ace had already fallen asleep twice. His narcolepsy had gotten worse again because he lost so much sleep to long nights out.

"I can't believe you managed that. You fall asleep, on a fucking swing, and don't even spill one drop from your cup?" Thatch yelled.

"I'm a man of many talents, all pretty useless, but hey - they include making sure I don't end up with a haircut from the fifties," Ace answered, speech slightly slurred, and took a sip from the cup.

"Marco, he is mean to me, again!"

"I'm sure that's just his way of expressing affection," Marco answered lazily. He breathed out smoke into the direction of the fest. The dance floor was getting fuller, and they watched Whitebeard trying to do the foxtrot with Haruta. Next to him Teach did an absolutely shabby tango with Blenheim.

"He is never mean to you," Thatch complained.

"That's because I hate Marco. He hogs all the blankets at night."

"You just kick them off of yourself and onto me when you get too warm." Marco gave Ace the joint back with a tiny smile.

"So you two are a thing?" Doma asked.

"God, no. He is sixteen. It's just that I'm a light sleeper, and when he falls into sleep paralysis I realize it instantly and can shake him out of it," Marco explained hastily.

"Ah, okay. But you are part of the family now?" Doma asked Ace.

"No. Why would I want to be with these smelly people, dressed like dads on their sick day from work?"

"I don't know. Just seems like you already are a part of them."

Ace stocked. Did it? Did it seem like he was part of a family? Ace had never felt like he was part of one. Dadan had not exactly smothered him with love. Because Dadan __knew__. The Whitebeard family didn't. If they would know him - really know him - they would throw him out faster than Ace could say, 'I promise, I hate him more than you do. I didn't choose to be his son.' If they would know about Ace's blood, he'd lose this. Maybe Luffy could stay, but Ace - who would want Ace?

He got up from the swing on the next sway forward.

"Ace?" Marco asked.

"Off to bed. I'd rather swallow rusty knives, than spend my evening with you, discussing your incoming retirement plans."

Thatch huffed. "He is so rude when he's drunk. He-"

But Ace was already out of earshot. He desperately wished for a hoodie, or an umbrella, anything to shield himself from the line of view of the people enjoying the night, when he felt as foreign under them as an alien, suddenly.

He crossed the garden in long strides. In the living room, Blamenco sat with a bunch of people Ace didn't know. "Yoo, Ace. You want to watch wrestling with us?"

"Nah, man. Going to bed, to sleep it off." Ace lied and got up the stairs as fast as he could.

Through Marco's room, onto the balcony, keep the panic at bay, sit down, find some cigarettes, it's all fine. Light up.

Ace's fingers shook. He wasn't part of the Whitebeard family. He couldn't be. He didn't __want__ to be. Did he? Ace had not been made to have a family. His existence was the ugly mistake, the big legacy, of a demon. Ace's worth, that he fought tooth and nails for, was being the big brother Luffy needed. Not more, not less. Mostly enough. One day Luffy would be fine without him. Ace would be free to leave, then. No one needed to know about Roger, about Sabo, about Rouge. About Ace's sins.

Ace hadn't been created to love, or to be loved. There was no space in the concept of family for that. He would live, he had to live for Luffy, but he desperately wished back for times when he had tried harder to be dead than alive.

The shadow of a man Ace never knew sat on his shoulders, to press down on him. His breath in Ace's ears a harbinger of times to come. Times that would leave Ace lonelier than ever. Times in the past where Ace's curse had been proven to be real. His existence had started with violence. Born by the worst crime possible. Mother murderer. It hadn't stopped there. Sabo's blue eyes, the last time they landed on Ace. His agony the perfect price for Ace's selfish try to create a bond. Luffy's tears falling down a cliff, into an ocean that wouldn't care. That couldn't be crossed. Trapped in a place full of demons that came into the world with Ace. Only rejection in the faces of the people around him and the decision that in order to not care he would grow more vicious, stronger, and more frightening than them. To channel the curse that was his blood. A hand forced itself into Ace's ribcage. Slowly pressing, tighter, tighter, ti-

Marco gently took the cigarette, pressed against Ace's arm, out of Ace's fingers.

Ace blinked until he could focus on him. Marco was kneeling in front of Ace, face intense, as he crushed the cigarette like an insect. When had he gotten there?

"I had the feeling something was wrong. I came after you. Seems like I wasn't fast enough. I'm sorry."

Ace stared into his face, expressionless. He didn't get a word of what Marco was saying. He didn't understand the times he sat together with him to laugh about things anymore. Why - and when - had he let Marco get closer? When he knew how things would end. Had to end. "Caring about me has never ended well for anyone. You should stop with it."

Marco gave him a long, thoughtful stare. "Too late," he said finally. "I already do. And I promise you, it won't change. I promise."

"Is that a threat?"

"Do you feel like it is one?"

Ace chose to not answer.

"This is about what Doma said, isn't it? About how you belong to us?"

"It's not," Ace lied. "Stop acting like you know a thing about me. You don't."

"Maybe," Marco said gently. "But I think I can make one guess. You are afraid of belonging here because you don't know what it would lead to. You are afraid of the future."

Ace shook his head, still not feeling anything. "I don't believe in fear whose source is the past or the future. That's for weak people." Like him. Constantly afraid of the past. On the run from it. Ace saw his lie in Marco's eyes, full of too much understanding, and couldn't bear it. He got up, stumbled out of the balcony and Marco's room, to the bathroom. Marco was on his heels, apparently not letting Ace be alone. Maybe that was good because focusing on Marco was better than on the scornfully laughing shadow at the corner of his eyes.

Ace looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. The flowers and butterflies were still there. Smudged, but still looking elegant. A beautiful facade to hide what was beneath. He washed his face, and it felt like he could wash the outside layer away to expose the evil in his veins. It was satisfying: Ace wasn't nice. Ace wasn't good. He looked at Marco, and he knew how to make sure he would stay away. If not, the outcome of his plan would also play into his cards.

"You said you'd do anything to support me, remember?" Ace turned around and stepped closer to him. Marco, trusting, kind, Marco nodded sincerely. Ace got even closer until there were only centimeters between them. His hands stroked over Marco's cheeks. Marco's breath ghosted over Ace's nose. Marco still hadn't caught on. His eyes remained concerned and sad.

Ace got on tiptoes until he was almost nose to nose with him and breathed out of parted lips, "Put your hands around my throat and fuck me until I pass out. Then do it once more."

He saw his words sink into Marco's eyes slowly. Saw the glass shatter.

"Wait. What?" Marco stepped back. He blinked at Ace, confused.

"I want to hurt myself. Make it better. Have sex with me." Ace was a bastard. Ace had never been more than this. Time for Marco to see it.

"You? What?" Marco didn't seem to want to grasp it.

"I'm asking you to fuck me. Please, Marco. Please."

Marco stared at Ace as if he had never seen him before, and _why did this feel so good?_ He frowned hard, first at Ace, then at the floor, turned on his heels, and left the room as fast as he could. Good. That was good. That was what Ace had predicted. That was just fine. He fished for his cigarette pack.

The door burst open, and Marco got in again. Change of heart? Option two would also be good. Really good.

"Get down there," Marco said.

Yes. Yes, this would be good. Exquisite. Ace sacked onto his knees, hands outstretched for Marco's fly.

"Jesus motherfucking Christ, Ace!" Marco spat out and dragged Ace back up roughly. "Go sit on the toilet. Let me clean your arm!"

Wait...? No! That was wrong. That shook Ace out of his state and left him dumbfounded. This had not been part of the deal! Marco was either to comply or leave Ace the fuck alone. Marco's fingers shook. He cleaned the tiny, oval burn on Ace's arm with care. Refused to look up at Ace. Placed the non-stick bandage, then pushed Ace's toothbrush into his hands.

Marco scrubbed his own teeth enraged. Spat toothpaste vengefully. "Get up. I have to piss," he said in a clipped tone.

Marco was truly mad. A bit more, and he might leave Ace alone with his cigarettes. Maybe Ace could provoke it out of him. And if Ace loved one thing, then it was provoking. He was good at it.

Ace seductively licked his lips and opened his mouth wide.

Marco's eyes got very small. He slung his arms around Ace and heaved him off the toilet seat to the floor. "God, are you drunk! I hope you will be embarrassed about this by morning!"

Ace snickered as he slowly slipped down the bathroom tiles. "I just want to impale myself on your huge dick!"

"Shut up, Ace! Please. I know this is my fault for not enforcing boundaries. But this also means I have the responsibility now. I won't let you hurt yourself. I won't leave you. So stop trying to make me do any of that!"

Ace did shut up at that. Marco wouldn't go? But Marco didn't know.

Marco collected Ace off the floor and made sure he got ready for bed. He threw the covers over Ace, got in as well, as close to the wall as he could, and turned away from him demonstratively.

Ace stared at his back. No. No. This was worse than mocking shadows. This was not how he had this planned. He was to either find his saving grace in forgetting via Marco or pain. But now he was trapped in this limbo between both.

Marco's back to him. All the people who turned away. Dadan and her family, always together, and Ace, with his makeshift bed in the storage room, staring at their backs, while they slept. Too afraid to reach out because it would be met with rejection. Sabo's and Luffy's backs turned to him, at nights when Ace couldn't sleep, because his boiling blood pounded in his head and every human being in this world seemed unapproachable. A life without faces turned towards him.

"Marco," he whispered when he couldn't endure that feeling anymore. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. Can you turn around?"

"Please, just sleep it off, okay?" Marco murmured.

And didn't turn.

Ace felt himself start to shake. Marco's back a wall he couldn't surmount. The way to a world filled with acceptance and love. And Ace could never have this. No. __No__.

He sat up, etched closer, and proceeded to climb over Marco.

"What are you doing?" Marco asked alarmed.

Ace squeezed himself into the ten centimeters between Marco and the wall. "Don't sleep with your back to me! Just throw me out on the street, okay? Call me the dirt under your shoes; it has the same meaning!" He inserted himself into Marco's arms and fought against the tears of shame, over his own irrationality, that were gathering in his eyes. So needy. So greedy for what he had never been allowed to want. "Don't sleep with your back to me. Please." His voice was trembling horribly. Marco sighed, then closed his arms around him, engulfed him, dragged them both away from the cold wall in Ace's back. His hands found their way into Ace's hair, and he stroked it lovingly.

Ace was still fighting against tears, but when Marco pressed Ace's head against his chest, and he was met with nothing but darkness, he gave in. No one could see.

Marco held Ace, and Ace wept.

* * *

"Come on, Marco. Tell me to go, or let me in. Don't give me this shit."

Ace is too mature to cry about a turned back now. He hasn't felt all alone in the world in years, but this still infuriates him. Marco knows how he feels about this.

Marco doesn't react for a long while, but Ace knows when to give him time.

"No talking tonight?" He asks finally.

"None," Ace assures.

Marco turns slowly. The room is too dark for Ace to make out his eyes. His arms find Ace once again. Ace stretches his own out for him, slots their bodies together. He sighs, in bliss, when Marco's smell hits him. Warm and familiar. His nose nestled against Marco's throat, their legs tangled together. Arms closed around one another, so no one has to drown alone, they sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo. Who do you think fucked up here? Ace with his manipulation attempt? Or was that something that Marco should have seen coming?  
> I think that Marco, as the grown-up, should have put more emphasis on establishing boundaries. He didn't, because he enjoyed Ace and his dynamic too much and he didn't think it would end like this. But then Ace's behavior is absolutely red flag wrong. The only thing I can promise you guys for the future is that Marco is never ever gonna fall for this kind of behavior from Ace. He is never gonna give in to Ace's manipulation.
> 
> I painted the picture for the canon verse, but the atmosphere was fitting enough. Have some comfort after that hurt.
> 
> Also if anyone wants to scream with me about what just went down in chapter 999, please do. I'm an emotional wreck and I need group therapy.


	27. Pimples and Convenience

On the morning after the fest, Marco was awake before Ace. He observed his face, the slight frown, the swollen eyes, puffy from last night. Ace had cried himself to sleep, and Marco had felt horrible.

Izou had been right. Marco didn't set up boundaries, and now it would hurt Ace. Marco had fucked up big time. He couldn't believe what had happened last night. He let it play revue in his mind again and again, but he didn't find an easy solution, or a preventable mistake, from only that last night.

It had started with Doma's question. But it would have come up one way or another. Ace would have to ask himself one of these days if he wanted to belong to them.

Ace hummed lightly in his sleep and cuddled closer to Marco, in search of some warmth, after he had kicked the blankets away earlier.

Marco threw them back over him and couldn't help himself but push a lost strain of hair, hanging into Ace's forehead, away. Marco loved the feeling of Ace's hair, gliding through his fingers, but all touch seemed forbidden now. Where before they had been friends that comforted each other, now he just saw Ace's mouth getting closer to his own, yesterday, and the panic it brought with it. He knew they had to talk about it. They couldn't pretend like yesterday hadn't happened. Marco needed to talk to Ace about them needing distance from one another. But then he remembered Ace crying, seeming all alone and lost, only because Marco had been lying with his back to him.

Marco had become steady support for Ace. Taking that from him would be a huge setback. He couldn't hurt Ace more. But both ways seemed wrong now. There was no moving forward or backward here that wouldn't hold consequences. He wanted to close his arms around Ace like he usually did when anxiety about the future overtook his thinking, but that thought alone brought on more anxiety now. He and Ace had gotten too close. There was no other way about it. Marco had enjoyed it too much to have someone with him who didn't seem to feel this natural barricade of rank and authority around Marco. Ace had broken down all of Marco's walls with just his laugher over Marco's dumb comments and his search for comfort. Marco had been so ready to give that comfort to him in all ways and shapes, but this, this yesterday, he hadn't calculated.

Marco loved Ace. He was a great companion, a good friend, and listener. He brightened Marco's day more than anyone else could. But maybe that was already wrong. The worst was that Marco thought he knew Ace, just a tiny bit. Ace was depressed and destructive, and if he would come to anyone with that, Marco was entitled enough to think it would be him. He couldn't take that trust away. Maybe he had to.

"What are you staring at?" Ace murmured, voice hoarse from sleep. He hadn't opened his eyes yet. How could he tell Marco was looking at him?

"You have a pimple on your chin," Marco answered.

"Do I?" With still closed eyes, he felt his chin for it.

"I saw it first."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Ace asked, yawned, and turned onto his back.

"That I call dibs. Finders keepers and shit."

"You want my pimple?"

"I want to pop it."

Ace opens his eyes to give him the look of a teacher not believing a horrible excuse. "You think you can call dibs on my pimples? Get your own and stay out of my face. Also, don't doctors advise against that?"

"I don't care. I want it. It's so satisfying."

Ace huffed out a tiny laugh, but it was strained. Uneasiness had sneaked up on them. Marco was sure that Ace remembered yesterday.

"How do you feel?" Marco asked.

"Like people were right when they said it feels better to grant wishes than receive. It's satisfying as fuck." He sighed and stretched, his eyes were closed again.

"What wish did you grant?" Marco asked, confused.

"Yours, from yesterday. I do feel embarrassed. A fuck ton."

Marco wanted to reach out, but he wasn't sure if they worked like that anymore. "Ace. If you do harbor any kind of...feelings. Maybe it would be better for you if we wouldn't be so close anymore."

Ace opened his eyes at that. "Feelings? I just thought it would be terribly convenient. Actually, I still think so. The proposal was a bit off, though, I admit."

"You think it would be convenient if we would have sex?" Marco clarified.

Ace turned to him, and his dark eyes darted over Marco's face. "Yeah. On nights that are...bad. And I don't have anyone."

"You want to sleep with me when you feel the urge to hurt yourself?"

Ace nodded silently.

"Ace," Marco said kindly. "If I'd hang up flags from Hong Kong, Turkey, China, Peru, Poland, and a fanatic communist's starting the revolution from his mom's basement, this room would have fewer red flags than your sentence had."

"Why? Is this about the age of consent? - I do consent. I want you to."

"I throw in Albania, Latvia, Denmark."

"Do you not like me? I can get some more muscles if you want. Or do you - I don't know - want me in a dress?" He was teasing now.

"Oh, look Belarus, Tennessee and Samoa joined."

"You could always get drunk, befo-"

"Ace," Marco stopped him. "It won't happen. Even if you were eighteen right now, you'd be way too young for me."

"First of all: That's bullshit, and you know it. We wouldn't be friends if that were true. Second of all: I want your dick. Not a relationship of any kind."

"Being friends is something completely different. And for that second part, I think I've run out of flags. Gryffindor, Norway, I don't know anymore. At least ten more."

Ace smiled. At least they weren't rendered to silence by embarrassment.

"I'm sorry about the way I acted last night. I wasn't feeling good, and then sometimes shit leaves my mouth before I can stop it."

Marco looked at him long and hard. "No. I'm sorry. I should have listened to Izou and enforced some boundaries between us."

"Boundaries? You said that yesterday, too. But I still don't get it." He etched closer to Marco and dragged Marco's arm over him.

"This. Maybe this is too close."

Ace turned in Marco's arm, eyes wide in shock. Biting his lips and his fingers grinding into Marco's arm. "You don't want me around anymore? Marco, I promise, I just said what I said because it made sense to me. It's just convenient."

"I don't think it should have made sense to you. You shouldn't feel like I'm an option. But I get that it's too late for that now."

Ace let go of his arm and rolled away from him. His jaw clenched. "No. If you don't want me, I understand. I'm not worth-"

"Stop that right there! You are worth everything. You are worth someone choosing you fist, and I tried that, but I fucked it up. It's just - you have to admit that we got very close pretty fast, right?"

Ace nodded.

"However our relationship might change in the future, it can't involve anything that even dares to breathe in the direction of all of that, okay? If you start to have...feelings, then I don't know how to maintain our relationship without hurting you in the process."

"Again, the only feeling I'd ask for is an orgasm. And besides that, I don't want anything to change. I like this. I like us."

It sounded like begrudgingly given truth. Ace couldn't yet accept that he wanted to be a part of their family. But he could admit that.

Marco took a deep sigh. "I don't know if this is a mistake. But I want to trust your judgment on this. If you think us together, as we are, is still beneficial for you, I want that too. In the end, it's you who has to know what's best for you. That's what I'm trying to believe, at least."

"Just not when I say that your cock is best for me?"

"That really does not speak for you, knowing what's good for you. And you are right: It's hypocritical of me. But I won't have sex with you, just because you are sad, okay? That's more levels of fucked up than I can count. As is trying to manipulate me into doing that. You do know that, right?"

Ace did look guilty. He nodded a tiny nod, towards the ceiling then, said, "so you'd talk or cuddle the sad out of me, but you won't fuck it out. Got it! Then we're still friends?"

Marco nodded, against his better judgment. "If that is what you want and you think is good for you?"

"I do. Do you still want to be friends with me and do you think it's good for you?" Ace asked, with big, innocent eyes and Marco's heart clenched.

"I think being friends with you is better for me than you realize," Marco admitted. Shit, it shouldn't be.

"Yeah?" Ace smiled and that was infinitely better than the tears, or the furiously grinding jaw. He climbed into Marco's arms with a happy sigh. "You still won't get my pimples."

"I changed my mind. Being your friend isn't worth it," Marco said drily.

Ace laughed and slung his arms around him.

* * *

Marco wakes up in Ace's arms. It's still dark, and he doesn't know immediately what woke him. Ace jerks and a tiny whimper escapes his throat. His hand, on Marco's chest, twitches.

"Shhh, you're fine," Marco whispers before he even knows what he is doing.

"Deuce, no," Ace breathes, and his head on the pillow turns from left to right.

Marco sits up and starts to stroke his hair. That used to be enough to get him out of nightmares as softly as possible. "You are safe. But you need to wake up. Come on, Ace. Ace."

"Marco!"

At first, Marco thinks Ace is awake and just surprised to see him, but he doesn't stop throwing his head back. Six years and he still dreams of Marco? No, it must be, because they are close together, again.

"Please stop!" The remains of Ace's right hand spasms, and with bile in his throat, Marco knows what Ace is dreaming about.

"Wake up, it's a dream. You can do it." He shakes him through, and when that doesn't do it, he slaps his face.

Ace throws Marco's arm off, his elbow into Marco's face so hard that Marco sees stars, and falls out of the bed in his try for an escape.

Marco flops back on the bed and groans.

Ace, on the floor, takes a second of hard breathing and centering himself, then he moans, "Fuck, Marco. Are you okay?"

"Gonna live, I think. You were right. You did get stronger."

Ace crawls back up onto the bed again. "Where did I hit you?"

"Close to the temple. Very precise, for someone awake for half a second."

"I had a good teacher."

"Compliments don't make that wake-up call better."

"Worth a try."

Marco sits up again. His head _throbs_. Ace's eyes follow his movements. They are dark and guilty. He is a sight of beauty in all his misery. His tank top is sweat through, his hair is tousled, and he is lovely.

"Top five?" Marco asks. When was the last time they played it like it was supposed to be played?

Ace takes a moment to think. He gives Marco a tiny grimace to indicate he knows Marco just asked to take his mind off of the nightmare. "Home, You, Luffy, technic, humor."

"Things you like most when they are dumb?" Marco guesses and rubs his temple.

"Things I'm glad to have close by, right now. But that was weirdly accurate," Ace replies. Marco can't keep off a smile. Ace can be really cute. "Technic over Deuce?" He asks.

"Oh, I forgot him. I guess because he's been the one constancy of things I like close by that I had, over the last years.

Marco's heart is an ugly traitor to twitch because of that.

"You dreamed about your time away, right?" He frames it carefully.

"Yeah," Ace admits willingly and shrugs. "I mean, after years and years of Sabo's death, it's a nice change of scene. What time is it?"

Marco grabs for his phone. "Seven-thirty, and a sunrise picture from Ilma."

Ace knows Marco well enough to know that he hasn't brought her name up without reason. A small glance between them and Ace understands that he has to explain himself. "So. I talked to her before she left."

"I heard. Why?"

"Because," Ace starts slowly, "I wanted to know what the woman was like you liked enough to marry. And because I thought she'd know more about how you are doing than me, but it seemed like- " He stops himself.

"Yeah?" Marco prompts.

Ace blinks at his crossed legs, and it's this second of hesitation that tells Marco that Ace is holding back something.

"Why did you break up with Ilma?" He asks.

Typical, Marco thinks. An old Ace classic, to make Marco work for his answers. Well, two can play this game.

"There was something missing. Something I thought wasn't important, but over the years, the lack became more - mhhh - let's say it filled more room in my head. It wasn't a big enough thing to leave her for it, and it wouldn't have been. A few other things came up, for example, how she and I both calculate too much before we speak, and it left us with lots of silence. But it was still all good. We were very comfortable with one another. Then she got pregnant, and I thought this would be all I could ever want. Our baby died, and suddenly there were a lot of ways the future could play out."

"What was that thing that was missing?" Ace asks carefully. Maybe fearful. Good, he took the bait.

"Dick," Marco says. "I missed dick."

Ace stares at him quietly for a second, then he topples forwards and laughs. His shoulders shake, and it's good to see them do that when the reason is laughter, instead of nightmares. He comes up again, serious once more, and his eyes scan over Marco's face.

The thing is that Ace knows when Marco is telling a lie, but if Marco doesn't know if it's a complete lie, how could there be truth for Ace to find?

"I miss sucking dick. I miss having someone dominate me. And I mean, I love women - they are kinder, mostly softer, and they do that thing where they pull their hair out from under their jackets with that super elegant motion. But no woman will ever blow me like a man."

Ace doesn't smile anymore. He blinks. "You are actually serious about this!"

Was Marco? He did wonder. It's nice to have Ace around to tell him when he is honest and when he isn't when Marco can't tell anymore. He knew there was a kernel of truth in this. The thought did come up a lot. But never as anything strong enough to make him consider leaving Ilma.

"Couldn't you just have talked that out and used a strap on?"

"I doubt she would have been adventurous enough for that, and it really wouldn't have done it for me."

Ace shakes his head in astonishment. No trace of the nightmare is left in his features. "And now you are back on the market? Any dick you have your sight on?"

And fuck, maybe this has backfired. Ace's grin is too confident, all of a sudden. "No," Marco says. "I got out of my marriage yesterday. Out of many reasons. It's a bit early to think about that. Also, you know I'm not a one-night stand kind of guy."

"I'm just saying," Ace starts with a mocking grin, "that this would be terribly _convenient_. The two of us back together in the same place and all."

Marco shoves him. "Shut it. I'm still mad at you, and this hasn't worked the first time you proposed it. Why would it work now?"

"It did work. Just took you a few years."

"No. I never slept with you because it was convenient. I never slept with you for reasons that wouldn't have done you justice." Ace's eyes turn big. God, he is beautiful. And speechless. Marco still got it. "I've tried to do justice to both of my two past relationships. And their breakups. I can't say the same for both of my partners."

He watches as Ace's eyes dim in shame and does not feel even a tiny bit of satisfaction.


	28. Pops

Pops is mostly that - a Pops.

At this age, most of the people he meets - especially in business - are young enough to be his children, and they behave as clumsily as toddlers in his eyes. Lovable idiots. Most of them. There are the odd ones out that aren't idiots. And even rarer, the odd ones out that aren't lovable.

Marshall D. Teach. Pops met him in a bar fight after someone had called him a nasty skank and smashed a bottle on his face. Teach had held himself well in that fight, and when his opponent lay on the floor, he stepped over him, sat down at the bar, and ordered five cherry pies. Pops had thought him amusing. He got him into the family. First only as an associate, then as a member. He thought he had the potential for a division commander, but Teach's ambition was lacking. He became friends with Thatch, and he was good with the gas station. There, he seemed to have found his place. Pops didn't think too much about him after that.

It turned out the biggest mistake of his life.

He lost a son to another one. Betrayal cut deeper than a knife, and the sight of Thatch's body, in a puddle of blood, would forever haunt him.

The second biggest mistake was letting Ace go. It was a bad decision for Ace because Ace had only just overcome all his traumas. It was a bad decision for Haruta, who had become one of Ace's best friends at that point. Bad for Fossa, bad for Blamenco. It was the worst for Marco.

Marco, his beloved, first son, who so rarely expressed more than platonic love for anyone. Who fell in love with Ace so throughout and vice versa, Pops sometimes asked himself if souls could be connected.

Ace left, out of reasons only known to Ace. A secret guarded to his heart, where he had held tales of past despair before. Marco had believed the reasons that Ace gave. Pops only knew of one, and it was preposterous. Ace not loving Marco anymore. Preposterous, nothing more.

One lie rarely comes alone.

Pops didn't have to ask Marco to know he believed it. It was visible in Marco's eyes when his gaze landed on the spider swing, or the rooftop, where he and Ace spent some summer evenings. Pops had once found him staring at the crack in the toilet from the Matrix incident, not moving, not really seeing.

There was nothing he could do. Pops was a father through and through, and he felt the helplessness of one when he looked at Marco's shattered heart. He thought that Ace's had to be in a similar state, somewhere far away from home and his father. Marco's and Ace's dance around morals, belonging, and their emotional needs, had found an abrupt end. How had it started?

It was early autumn. After Ace's first Sommer with them. A hot summer. A summer that felt like it wouldn't end. All good times must end, though, however, the winds of change did not come from fall raising its head with cold winds and changing colors, but from within. Marco and Ace had a falling out. Pops didn't know about what, and afterward, there was a difference between them.

They were more careful, less playfully around one another. When they even were around one another. Ace was coming home so late it was early again. Marco sat on the sofa, alone, and sighed, with an expression as if doomsday had arrived. Luffy was annoyed with both of them.

In the end, it was Izou who asked.

He, Marco, Pops, and Stefan were out on a walk. Ace had, surprisingly, been home. To the shock of Izou and Pops, and Stefan’s disappointment, he had opted to stay home and indoors. Ace liked being outdoors too much for that to be normal.

"Marco, what the fuck is wrong with you and Ace. You are both mopping. He is at least not doing it at home, but it's getting really boring really fast to listen to your endless silent suffering," Izou said, as soon as they were out of earshot. Stefan was happily running a few meters ahead of them, excited to get to the park. The leaves were starting to change color and it could have been rather lovely if Pop's children wouldn't make such serious faces.

"If it is silent, one would think you could tune it out."

"It's silent. But so is Stefan when he knows we are going to the vet. Don't you think his suffering then is also loud?"

"I like how you are comparing me with Stefan's death march act when he has to walk the five meters to the first division, where he gets more treats than in the whole day usually, while one of us checks his teeth."

"Stop trying to stir my thoughts away. What is wrong with you and Ace?"

"Yes, Marco," Pops said. "Something is not right. You two are so close. What happened?"

Marco had taken his time to answer. "You know how you said I should have set boundaries? You were right," he told Izou. "I think I fucked up the day I let him sleep in my bed for the first time. That's just a different level of intimacy. It didn't feel significant at the time, but now..."

"What did Ace do?" Izou asked. He already knew, or at least suspected, if his expression was something to go by.

"He proposed we have sex. During nights where he isn't feeling well. I told him no, of course. We agreed we can stay friends, he thinks that I'm still good for him. But I'm not sure anymore. I fucked this up, didn't I?"

"Yes," Izou answered the same moment that Pops said, "no."

"You and Ace are good for each other. You haven't laughed as much as you do when you are with him, in years. If ever," Pops stated.

"But this isn't about me!" Marco gave Pops an unhappy look.

"I think it would be a mistake to take away the support that you gave him. He fought against that alone so much in the beginning. Don't give him reasons to think that was a mistake. Yes, you fucked up, but I think quietly distancing yourself from him won't do him justice either, "Izou explained.

Marco nodded. "I talked to him, and we came to the same conclusion."

"Then what is the problem?" Pops asked.

"It feels different now," Marco admitted. "He's mad at me because I said this wouldn't change anything between us, but it did. It feels wrong to touch him. Even if it's just platonic. I was withdrawn the first evening after it happened, and I'm not sure he slept more than a few hours at home since then."

"So, he confesses to liking you, and you tell him off. And he thought this wouldn't change anything?" Izou asked.

"Oh, no. He doesn't like me in that way. He said he just thought it would be 'convenient.'"

"Then I really don't understand the problem." Pops threw a stick for Stefan, whose reaction was only an irritated look in his direction. Marco didn't answer, but his gaze was clouded. "Son, I still trust you when it comes to Ace. The two of you will work this out. You benefit from one another too much for this to fail." Izou's mouth had gotten smaller and smaller, but whatever he wanted to say, he suppressed it. Pops was glad for it. It was Izou’s job to be unrelenting in his perceptiveness. But sometimes it ended in pessimism. "When we get home, I want us to spend a normal evening. Together with Ace if he is up for it. You can work your way back together onto neutral ground, with us around."

Marco knew better than to talk back.

Ace, at the beginning of that fall, had been careful around Pops. He still insulted him at any given opportunity, but it lacked its viciousness. Pops saw through it and recognized it as insecurity. When ordered to do something, Ace would usually pick a half-hearted fight and, in the end, comply as silently as he could to not have it be a big thing how he did want to please Pops. He did. He didn't know yet.

When they came back from their walk, they found Ace and Luffy brawling outside in the garden. Stefan inserted himself right into their fight, to both of their amusement.

"Come in, you two," Pops requested. "Dinner will be ready soon, and I want us to spend the evening together, with a nice movie."

"Please not the Godfather, again," Luffy moaned. "It's so annoying that you only let me watch the boring scenes."

"You can pick, Luffy. How about that?"

"Oh, what will he choose? A mystery as big as the colossus of Rhodes," Ace mocked and gave him a light headbutt. It didn't dim Luffy's grin in the slightest. "Spirit!"

"Again?" Izou asked with a hint of despair in his voice.

"Did someone say 'Spirit'? Should I make popcorn?" Thatch yelled from inside, and Luffy ran past his brother, hopped through the glassless window frame he had broken and they hadn’t repaired yet, to get to Thatch in the kitchen.

"Come on, Ace," Pops prompted, knowing fully well the reaction he would get.

"It might be a surprise for you, Banana-brain, but I have better things to do than watch some pony film. Drinking straight up rat poison would be more entertaining."

"I'm sure it would make your brother happy if you would join," Pops said good-naturedly.

"It would probably make Luffy happy to drink rat poison, as well. The bar is not very high with that one."

"Accee," Luffy screamed from inside and came back into view. "I'm Spirit. I said it first."

"Oh?" Ace answered and lifted one eyebrow. You think you can just claim Spirit, yeah? Well, I'm the Colonel who shoots him."

"He fails."

"We are gonna watch the special edition where he shoots him, turns him into meat, and feeds him to his friends."

Luffy laughed.

After dinner, they settled in the living room. Pops in his chair, Izou and Thatch on the carpet leaning against the sofa, Namur, Fossa, and Luffy on one side of the sofa, which, artfully planned by Izou, left the sofa's long corner for Marco and Ace.

Ace seemed uncomfortable. His eyes wandered to Luffy's for one of their silent conversations that Pops couldn't decode. Pops did understand Izou's gaze though. And so did Marco. He gave a tiny, uncertain shrug into Pop's direction.

Sometimes Marco needed an OK for his own wants and emotions, and Pops wasn't one to not give him that. He nodded meaningfully.

Marco took a deep breath, then turned to Ace to offer him some popcorn and an embarrassed smile. Both of them frowned at the bag, aware that this was more than just popcorn and more of an offering of peace.

Ace didn't react at first. Besides sending out desperate silent messages that didn't reach his brother, too occupied with cheering on the movie. It reached Pops, and this time the meaning was clear, and so Pops nodded at Ace too, and thought that his children were the most lovable idiots.

Ace, slowly, pushed the popcorn away. His gaze was alert. Testing. Like the rabbit tapping on the fox's paw to check if it's asleep or ready to attack. Marco let Ace push the bag away, watched as he set it on the carpet. Then, as Ace gradually shifted closer, Marco opens his arms for him.

The film had only just reached its second half when Ace was asleep on Marco's chest, Marco's arms around him like a shield and a tiny smile on both their lips. Pops understood then. That Ace was a part of them. Pops had thought of him and Luffy as his sons before, but then, at that moment, it became his goal to make them think of themselves as being members of their family, too. So everyone could smile like this forever.

* * *

If Ace and Marco had kept their distance, would this have ended in heartbreak? Pops hadn't known back then. He hadn't thought giving into the connection that Ace and Marco desired would lead them to pain. To broken hearts. Maybe, just maybe, it won't.

He gets up early and down from his third floor to the second. The stairs are becoming a bigger obstacle by the day. Not only for him but Stefan as well. Marco has been bugging him about moving to the ground, or at least the second floor, for a year. But the second floor doesn't feel like Pops can fit. Over the last years, the second floor has stood empty. Only thick layers of memories were stored there. Too thick to even attempt to sort through the clutter.

But now, as he gets down the stairs, a sound he hasn't heard in over half a decade hits his ears.

Out of Marco's room, the music that is Marco's and Ace's mingled laugh. Then Marco's voice, too muffled to understand. Ace yells, "you are actually serious about this!"

Pops lets them have their privacy and moves further down to the kitchen, Marco's laugh still ringing in his ears. Pops missed it. Ace has that ability to make Marco laugh. He always had it and that he hasn't lost it is - yes. Yes. This is the moment that Pops understands that this has the potential to heal a broken heart. Maybe even two.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, this is kinda short. Next one is gonna be a lot longer. Whitebeard is a bit sentimental and lowkey flowery in his language use, but I kinda fucked it up I think. 
> 
> Also, the reference to Spirit became a thing when I thought about what kind of movie Luffy would like and this the first one I could think of that deals with freedom in a way that I think he'd enjoy.


	29. Pressure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Racism, Ace-style casual conversation about underage, violence, panic-attacks, drugs, an unjust police system and shameless power abuse.  
> Jesus, that sounds dark. Didn't feel like that while writing it.
> 
> *local quest guide fairy appearing out of mist* "Take this, it might become useful on the way" : Dumpster diving is the term used for people breaking into the dumpsters of supermarket chains and 'stealing' the food they threw out. Mostly done by leftists, as a form or protest against an affluent society. It is illegal, but most cops are chill about it, at least in my country.  
> *local quest guide fairy disappears into the mist.*

Ace doesn't follow Marco downstairs immediately. He stays put on the bed, letting Marco's words sink in.

Their breakup had to happen in the way that it did. And Ace doesn't do regrets. He doesn't. But what is that feeling, deep in his stomach, when he looks at the picture of Marco and him, on the desk? Their tattoos and smiles on the same height, as if there wasn't a place where Marco ends and Ace starts. So I intune with one another. Hands always touching. At that time, Ace hadn't even grasped the concept of a breakup. Not between them. It hadn't made sense to him on an emotional or rational level.

Marco sometimes told him that they would be friends, still, if Ace ever did decide that he wanted more from his youth than Marco. That he could always ask for an out or a pause. And Ace had given him a comical look and asked him why they would ever need that. They were in love, after all.

Marco's smile was tiny and half sad when he heard Ace talk like that. Ace can't believe that it turned out the correct reaction. They did break up. Ace had to. For both of their sakes. This fucking picture. Hadn't Thatch been the one who had taken it? Ace stares at his past self. He had been happy, then. It had taken so long to find his happiness. It had taken a brother, a father, a whole family, and a loving relationship to make the difference for him.

Today, he can be happy on his own. A skill he started to practice back then. But the most fortunate he ever felt was when he and Marco could just hold still for a second, in a never stopping world, and smile at each other.

He fondly touches the tattoo on his chest. ‘ _Is that your hand or is it mine?’_ Marco's and his hands close together and the comfort he can find with their warmth. Between their palms. Within.

Ace finds the second he needs to reawake his determination. Doflamingo. Blackbeard. Today will be a long day, but he isn't alone with this.

He goes to the bathroom. Marco left him a tiny smiley on the mirror, still foggy, from Marco's shower. Ace draws his own next to it. He missed this.

Down in the kitchen, Pops and Marco are already in the process of drinking their respective liters of coffee. Stefan is lying to their feet. It's so familiar, Ace almost steps up to Marco to give him a tiny 'haven't brushed my teeth yet' good morning kiss to his cheek.

When Ace wishes a casual, "Morning," and gets his own coffee mug, Marco looks like Ace feels. Like they used a time turner, or like they are in a play where they act out their past. This hasn't been them in so long.

Pops is not bothered by either of their moods, but he is observing them.

"Slept well?" He asks Ace. Ace doesn't know if he is imagining the knowing undertone. Is this an insinuation to Marco and him being back to sharing a bed?

Either way - he doesn't want to have more secrets from his family than he has to. That has never done him any good. Will Marco care if he blurts this out? Time to find out.

"I didn't smoke last night, so it was nightmare-time. I punched Marco in the face on accident when he woke me up."

"Oh, that is why you are up so early?" Pops asks and does not react at all to the hidden information given there. Neither does Marco.

"Yes. Also - we have a long day ahead of us. Better start now!" Ace exclaims, mostly to motivate himself, but it doesn't have the effect he hoped for because it is rather depressing to see Pop's and Marco's only reaction to this be them both chugging their next cups with immaculate poker faces. They definitely don't feel as ready to tackle the day as Ace does. He needs Luffy for this. And in general. He should be here in a while for the Doflamingo discussion. Ace misses him.

Ace wasn't around for so many important steps on his little brother's path of becoming an independent grown-up person. Even if Marco's and Ace's toothbrushes might find their way back into the blue cup on the sink, Luffy's won't ever be back. That is alright, of course. That is Luffy's progress.

Even though Luffy loves the Whitebeard family, he never felt like they were the end of his journey. He needed to find his own crew. And he did. Ace and he had known that that would happen someday. But it pains him to think that they will, most likely, never live together again. Of course, it would be better to have everyone here, on Moby Street, where they are safe. Instead of alone for Blackbeard or Doflamingo to single someone out for an attack. Luffy won't agree to that. That would feel like someone constricting his freedom.

Ace spends his morning on the sofa in the living room, scrolling through his phone, with Stefan on top of his legs, and then knocked out in his first nap of the day.

He wakes up with his nose pressed into Stefan's fur and Luffy's face smiling down at him.

"Hey, Ace!" He yells in true Luffy excitement. "Get up! Grandpa is on his way, and he is bringing Smoker and Akainu."

"You tell me I have to get up for Akainu?" Ace says and yawns into Stefan's fur.

"How about you get up for us?" comes Fossa's voice, from somewhere behind Luffy.

He and Rakuyo get into view, and Ace sits up, which earns him a disappointed whiff from Stefan.

"Morning," Ace grins, and they smile back. It's so good to be back. To have them around.

Fossa throws an arm around Luffy. "And who is this rarely seen guest?" He asks and smiles the goofy smile only Luffy can bring out of him.

"I'm busy. We have to film every day while the weather is still good. Nami says it could switch to rain and mist any day now."

Ace is glad that Luffy stays true to his hobbies. No matter the Blackbeard-Flamingo situation. Luffy found his friends and callings and is the happy grown-up he was destined to become. And he still loves Ace. Ace knows the difference between not needing and not wanting. Luffy can survive without Ace, but that doesn't mean Ace can't be part of his life now. This bond will forever be their greatest treasure.

Luffy drags him up so that Ace can't fall back asleep. Not that standing up is the ultimate fail-proof answer to that.

It takes hours until most people have arrived. Akainu stays in the back with Smoker and Gramps. Haruta throws them evil looks. Mostly at Gramps - Ace catches Marco's gaze from across the room, and they both smirk. Haruta's hatred for Gramps is tied to an incident happening in the first fall Ace was here.

Overall that hadn't been a good time for Ace back then. Marco had rejected him, and that was fine. What wasn't fine was that Marco had told him that he wouldn't leave Ace. But he did. Not far. In general, about thirty cm. But Ace _felt_ that distance. The first night after they talked about it, Marco hadn't slept with his back to Ace, but he also hadn't thrown his arm over him.

Ace hadn't really slept at the Whitebeard house after the first night of separation. He stayed out for long and napped with his head on the counter in the gas station.

The gas station hours were good. He was joking with Teach and the customers as if everything was fine, and he craved that. Luffy was with Ace in the station often and charmed ice cream out of even the most serious looking, BMW driving, suit-wearing fuckers.

Marco was back to normal after about a week. He offered Ace popcorn, during a movie, and it was too tempting to not give in. To Marco. Not the popcorn. But Ace couldn't trust in that anymore.

Marco had deprived himself of Ace after Ace had tried to initiate something between them, and he would do it again if Ace made that mistake one more time. So Ace did. Again, and again. Just to see if it would happen. If Marco would leave again.

He flopped down next to Marco on the spider swing on one of the first cold evenings of the year. Marco was reading a book about some foreign, dead politician, but his eyes stopped moving when Ace sat down.

He would let Ace talk and then decide if he would answer like he usually did these days. Because there was about a fifty percent chance that all Ace would say would be very crude.

"I think I have a reputation at the gas station now. As the hot, homosexual, horny attendant. I get asked out a lot, all of a sudden. Pretty convenient."

Marco's eyes stayed grimly on the pages of his book.

"Today a hot guy came in and said this 'filling station' had been warmly recommended to him by a friend. That he should ask for Ace," Ace lied.

"So I asked him what the filling station could help him with today. He said that his pump was too big and wouldn't fit - If I could check that out and I said that I'd love to see a pump this big - and then we did it in the toilet."

Marco didn't move a muscle.

"But to be honest his pump was rather small," Ace spun his story further. "He couldn't even really choke me when I had his whole dick in my mouth. Kind of sad."

Marco's nasal wings fluttered lightly. Ace moved closer to him to make sure he could observe the whole of Marco's reaction.

"I bet you could choke me really good. I bet your cum tastes better than his, pineapple head."

Marco sighed.

And didn't leave.

For some reason, that made Ace feel even more insecure and uncertain about the state their relationship was in.

"What are you reading about?" He asked with a defeated sigh.

"Nerd shit. Pretty boring and irrelevant for today's politics."

"You know I like it when you tell me some random facts about the world."

Marco's phone chimed, and he accepted the call with an apologetic shrug at Ace, but Ace knew he was glad he wouldn't have to prove to Ace how much of a nerd he actually was.

"Hello?"

"Oh - Okay, slow down," he said deliberately calm. But his usually droopy eyes had widened.

"Yes. And now? - Fuck!"

"I take him with me, yes. Half an hour. Bye."

He sat up on the swing and buried his head in his hands for a second.

"What's wrong?" Ace asked.

"Haruta got arrested by your grandpa. Can you come with me to the station?"

They both gathered themself as they approached the car.

"This means the deal is done for?" Ace asked.

"Guess we will find out there."

"Isn't Rakuyo's division for legal advice and shit?"

"I don't think this will be about legal or illegal," Marco said darkly. Ace didn't know what he meant.

They got to the station, and the first thing they saw was a cop with a head formed like a milk container.

"Fuck," Marco mumbled. "That's Akainu."

"Akai- who?"

"Akainu. He hates us. Don't let him provoke you. He was against our agreement with them, and he would use anything as a reason to see it broken."

He gave Ace a calculating look. "Maybe you just don't open your mouth until we are inside, okay?" Ace shrugged in an 'I can try, but who knows' gesture.

Akainu walked up to them as soon as they left the car. "You still have money for the car? Peculiar, when little Haruta has to steal food. But then this does look like a complete wreck." Marco didn't answer, just walked past him to the entrance. "Stealing moldy grapes out of trash cans. The mob life doesn't seem to be what it used to."

"Haruta was dumpster diving?" Ace deduced.

"Call it what you want, it is stealing and a crime - who even are you, spic?"

Ace froze in his step. "What did you say to me?"

"Come on, Ace," Marco pleaded.

Ace stared into the milk container head's eyes and refused to back down.

"I asked who you are, spic."

Marco took Ace by the hand and dragged him off and through the entrance.

"Marco," Ace protested, "didn't you hear what he said?"

"We can't do anything about that. Can't call the police on the police and can't punch a cop without ending up in jail."

"I won't just leave and let that be it, what the fuck?!" Ace yelled in honest bafflement. Marco turned to him with serious eyes.

"I'm white - I can't know how much racism sucks to hear. It is not up to me to tell you how to deal with it. But I can tell you for a fact that it won't end well if you fight him for it now. The risk is yours to take, but I'm asking you to cool down and not be provoked so that we can do what we want to do here. Which is trying to get a friend out of a bad situation."

Ace begrudgingly gave in. He refused to let go of Marco's hand. The cold fingers felt grounding when his head was overheating. He breathed in deep and nodded. Let Marco drag him off.

They entered, after a registration procedure, to find Haruta sitting in front of Monkey D. Garp's desk, staring at a phone in Gramp's hand.

"And here he is ten. After beating up at least five people older than him. Didn't even get a scratch - the black eye he got from me as a punishment for being such a violent child. Oh, there he is. Ace!"

"You arrest people and then show them pictures of my happy childhood?" Ace asked gruffly.

Haruta looked up to them and gave Marco a relieved grin.

"Marco! Thanks, fucking god, you are here. I thought he'd drag out the baby pictures next."

"What the fuck, Gramps?" Ace sat on the desk, crossed his arms, and glared down at him. Ace hated others controlling how much they knew about Ace or didn't, and Gramps understood that. This was a pure display of power. America was supposed to be a fresh start. No reminders of the past belonged to this side of the ocean.

"Grandson, how are you?" Gramps asked, smile as confident as ever, and Ace felt anger pool in his stomach.

"As I always am when I have to spend time with you and look into your smug Palpatine face. Can we collect our friend and go?"

"Well, about that." Gramps leaned back in his chair. Ace didn't like the face he was making. Like a hunter who had found an animal in a trap.

Oh, Ace got it. Why Marco had said this wasn't about legal or illegal and why he asked for Ace to come along. This was about negotiations. This was Gramps wanting something from Ace.

"So. Haruta broke into private property, tonight, and stole from a supermarket chain."

"I went through a trashcan! It was-"

"If we wanted to make this serious, we really could," Gramps said loudly, his smile still in place. "And we have the deal to think about. No serious crimes, you remember, don't you, Marco?"

Marco had been silently observing. His voice was soft when he spoke up. "What do you want us to do for Haruta's freedom?"

Garp grinned. "Quick as always. But a bit pessimistic. I want nothing from you. And not much from Ace. You'll find me to be easy to agree to."

Ace stared him down, but it was about as effective as it would have been to glare at a running TV. That also wouldn't stop what was to come.

"I want weekends. You and Luffy at mine. I can collect you after school."

Ace should have seen that coming. The trick here was to be quicker than his grandfather. If Ace would hesitate he'd see it as weakness and press on for more. No time to be irritated.

"Only me. You won't drag Luffy into this. I'm not having him be at a house with your rules."

"Both of you. Every second weekend."

"Only me every second weekend, and if he wants to, I can ask Luffy if he'd like to come to eat ice cream with us or some other picture-perfect family shit. So you can take photos of that to hang up on the fridge next to the crime wall and my mug shots."

"Agreed."

"Not quite. If I can't, for some reason, Luffy is also not gonna come. You don't get time alone with him, or I veto."

"If you can't be there Haruta could be. Right, Haruta?" Gramps asked her with a big 'I have the upper hand here' cop-smile. Haruta sneered but nodded.

"No. Me or no one."

"No one else that you trust? And poor Haruta might sleep in a cell for it, Ace."

"Marco," Ace stated. Allowed no insecurity in his voice. Could he trust Marco? Even after what happened a few weeks ago?

Marco, next to him, gave him a look that Ace couldn't read, then turned to Gramps."I have another condition."

"This has nothing to do with you," Gramps replied, not annoyed but interested in what Marco had to say.

"Not yet. It will if Ace comes home from his time with you injured in any way. Because then our agreement will be done."

Gramps accepted with a nod. "Next point. I-"

"What?" Ace spat. "Another one? You have a whole list or something?!"

"I want father's day at Luffy's school. Teach the children something about laws and crime."

"Too bad. I already promised that to Marco," Ace lied.

"As what? Liaison of a mafia boss?!" Gramps yelled, affronted.

"He is a doctor. He went to university and shit."

Marco gave an awkward smile.

Gramps grumbled but seemed to accept it. "I want your new phone number, and I want you to accept all of my calls."

"Forty percent," Ace haggled.

"Seventy."

"Fifty. And I give your number to Luffy so he can call you in an emergency."

"Accepted. Next point. I want you to come in here to get familiar with the life of a member of the police force for your training later."

"Vetoed. You press on that, you lose all we agreed on before."

"Haruta could go to jail for years and years if I would really want it."

"I will make sure you see Luffy twice a year. And I will send someone in for father's day to speak about all the money you can make from drug deals in this city because the cops here have milk containers for head and are racist fucks whose only sports program is playing tennis on Wii fit and beating their wives. The most intelligent life you find in this station is the bacteria in the milk."

"You veto this, you lose all right to veto more."

Oh, he thought himself so clever. He knew Ace wouldn't agree. Of course, he knew. He had something worse for him, and that was what they were really here for.

"You can't take the right to veto. Tell me the rest of your pathetic Christmas wish list, and I tell you what I can do."

Gramps's eyes were serious, all of a sudden. His smile vanished.

"Funny, that you mention Christmas. It's about that."

"Ugh, we won't spend Christmas with you here, forget it!" Ace answered.

"No. Not here. We - You, Luffy, and I - will fly to Brazil for Luffy's school winter break."

Ace waited for a second to get an indication that that was one fucked up kind of joke.

It wasn't.

He turned to Haruta. "We can send you care packages to prison. With all your favorites snacks. And fuzzy blankets."

"Ace, Dadan hasn't seen you in close to three years. She misses you."

"I will write you a letter once a week," Ace told Haruta, not even looking at his grandfather anymore.

"Marco?" Haruta whined.

Marco lay a hand onto her shoulder in silent support. Ace felt like he needed one too.

"Ace," Gramps started, but Ace didn't want to hear it.

"No. I'm not going back. If she misses me then fly her in. I won't step one foot into Foosha."

"Not even I can make a criminal record as long as hers disappear. I can't get her into the country -You won't have to go to Foosha. We just stay on the Mountain. Two weeks."

"Veto!" Ace yelled.

"Luffy misses her too!"

"Then make your deal with him and leave me out! I won't motherfucking go!"

"Haruta, would you like top or bottom bunk in your cell?" Garp asked.

"FUCK YOU!" Ace screamed. "I can't go! You know I can't fucking go there!"

"I'm asking for two weeks. One. Okay? One week, after new years. One day for arrival, one day for leaving. So five full days."

"No!"

"Ace!"

"Don't act like I am the unreasonable one here. You know I have good reasons," Ace said quietly.

"Just five days."

Ace was losing ground here fast. His grandfather wouldn't butch on this.

"I do this once. You can never make me do this again. I go there one more time and this will be it. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Gramps said. His eyes were stern.

Ace wanted to scream. He had lost here. This whole conversation had been lost. On every point.

"Make your own deal with Luffy, I can't decide for him," he said, defeated.

"Your brother wants to be where you are. He will come out of his own devices."

"So...I can go?" Haruta asked.

"Sure," Gramps answered. "Don't go dumpster diving again, it's against the law, blabla."

Ace turned from them and left the building. He felt Marco's gaze in his back, but he didn't wait for him.

Outside of the station, the milk container head cop was inspecting Marco's car.

"Hey," Ace said and went up to him.

"Spic, you are out early. Where are your criminal frie-"

Ace punched him.

Marco's words in his mind. 'Can't punch a cop without ending up in jail.' Honestly - Ace preferred jail over Foosha, a place where people knew Ace's father. Where Sabo had died. If he would go to jail, that was better than going back. Ace tried to punch him a second time but was held back by strong arms. Marco? No. His grandfather. They had followed him out. But Ace had been too zoned out to realize.

"What did you just call my grandson, Akainu?" Gramps yelled.

Marco's hands, gentler, slung themselves around Ace. "Let's go."

He dragged Ace off while his grandfather screamed abuse into Akainu's face. Haruta opened the door so that Marco could maneuver Ace into the back seat. Ace fought against his hands in rage. "Let me out, that bitch's spine lived its last day today. I'm gonna rip it out and use it as a shoehorn so that at least a part of him has meaning to the world! That racist piece of rotten milk lookin motherfucker!"

Marco got him settled, he and Haruta got into the front seats, and they drove off.

Ace fumed. It was so bad he was silent. When they hit the main street, Haruta turned to him.

"Hey, Ace? Thanks, okay? It fucking sucked to be the playball between you and your grandfather, but I appreciate that you made sure I don't get locked up."

Ace couldn't even say anything. He stared out of the window in silence. Christmas on Mt. Colubo.

He made sure he didn't cry, but it took effort.

The ride home was uncomfortable. Ace felt like he wanted to scream, and it got worse every time he looked into Marco's passive face in the rear mirror.

When they arrived home, Izou, Thatch, and Pops were there, and Haruta started to tell their story in animated ways. Ace just stalked past them and up the stairs. He wanted his brother. Only Luffy could get him down and out of his homicidal mood, but he was sleeping over at Zorro's. So Ace grabbed one of his ready emergency joints, from Luffy's and his room, and lit it up on the balcony.

Marco joined after a minute. Ace was still raging. Marco sat silently next to Ace and Ace ignored him.

"Can I have a drag?"

Ace looked up to him, mouth already opened for something crude to say, but Marco didn't look like Marco was supposed to look. He was still calm and collected, but his eyes were wider than usual. His gaze too hard.

Ace gave him the joint. Marco's fingers around it were holding on tightly. He inhaled the smoke purposefully but didn't manage to hold it in for longer than half a second.

"What's wrong?" Ace asked ruffly.

"Panic attack. Gonna be over in a minute."

"You have a panic attack?"

"I get them sometimes. Nothing to worry, bit of weed, and I'm gonna be fine."

"Why are you having a panic attack?"

"Haruta almost got imprisoned. I just have a lot of what-if scenarios in my head right now." His face stayed expressionless, his voice controlled, but his fingers were betraying him. They almost crushed the tip of the joint in their grip.

"What helps against panic attacks?"

"Weed. Pressure. Music, sometimes. Laugher. Time, mostly."

Ace got up from his chair and into Marco's lap without a second of thoughts. He felt Marco's heart beating too hard and fast, and yes, even if he didn't have many outside symptoms, his chest felt like it was caging in a small animal.

"Ace?" Marco asked. "Please not now, okay? This is not sexual, crude, comment time, okay?"

"You said 'pressure'. Pressure is good? So here I am. Nothing more. No 'sexual comment time."

Marco's breathing was the fast panting of someone who had almost drowned, but he still made sure to not let out a sound. Ace could only tell it was wrong because he felt his chest constrict in rapid pulses. Pressure wasn't doing it. Laugher? Ace could do that.

"You up for Top five?"

Marco nodded, still trying to get the smoke deeper into his lungs but breathing out too quickly.

"Okay, I have something," Ace said after a few seconds. "Newborns, naked mole rats, Benedict Cumberbatch, E.T, edible paper, and children's toothpaste."

Marco gave him a questioning look, then he breathed out "Things that are tasty?"

Ace lost it. This day had been complete shit, maybe that was why this was so funny. "No," he whined, "Top five things sweet, yet disgusting."

And Marco lost it too. "You think Benedict Cumberbatch is sweet? You said his chin looks like a dead cat dangling from a fence."

"Yet disgusting!" Ace tried to defend his honor, but it dissolved with his giggles.

It took a few more minutes for Marco to calm down enough to be able to get ready for bed.

Ace felt pretty proud of himself for managing to help Marco. So proud, for a good few minutes he had almost forgotten. Christmas close to Foosha. Christmas next to Sabo's grave. Christmas on the other side of the ocean.

When they got into bed, Ace asked, "did the pressure thing work at all? I mean my weight on top of you?"

"It was nice. Thank you, Ace. It should be me comforting you, not the other way around. Especially tonight. You seemed really upset."

"It was comforting for me too," Ace murmured and turned to Marco. He was observing Ace out of his droopy eyes, and Ace thought that he was seeing way too much.

"You don't have to tell me about it, but you really don't want to go, hm?"

"No. I never wanted to go there ever again."

Marco nodded, and Ace was glad that he didn't press on.

"Can I have some more of that comfort?" Ace asked and stretched his hands out for Marco.

Marco willingly put his arm around Ace and closed his eyes.

"No, I mean -"

Ace sat up, pushed Marco onto his back, rested his head on top of his chest.

"I feel like I ask this too much. What are you doing?" Marco asked, somewhere between defeat and alarm.

"Pressure. Imagine like I'm a weighted blanket."

"Ace-" Marco tried to protest, but Ace didn't let him finish.

"Please. Just tonight."

Marco grumbled his unwillingness into Ace's hair. Confliction flickered between his eyebrows.

But he didn't push Ace away.

"So - is this now crude, sexual, comment time?" Ace teased.

"I will rip out your vocal cords and strangle you with them!"

Ace giggled into Marco's neck. Felt Marco's laugher, deep in his belly, where their naked skin touched.

Yes. He could still trust Marco. Marco was still his friend, and he was comfort. He was laughter on days like this. Marco's hands were his savior when they stroked over his head, which had drifted off back to Foosha. Marco's smell was a lifeline when he fought against the memory of blue eyes and smile with a tooth gap. Christmas in Foosha. Asleep in Marco's arms right then. For that night, it would be alright.

* * *

The room gets too crowded for Haruta's gaze to be able to meet Gramps. They all have arrived. Some of them, Ace hasn't seen, yet, since his return.

Doma comes up to him and hugs him."I think I am the last one," he says to Ace, and Ace steps up and into the middle of the room.

He adjusts his posture and feels all eyes on him.

"Let's begin."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fuuuckkk I want to write so bad, and so much more, but I always end up feeling guilty if I don't use my time for my art portfolio. But I'm so unhappy with my art, I just want to write. ugh. What I'm saying is that I crave the validation of the dissatisfied, frustrated artists. Please give me a kudo. Please. I need an internet point.


	30. Smoker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me fresh up your memories concerning Bridgefy, from chapter 16: Mesh networking app that can send messages over Bluetooth. Like a human chain. A message can hop from people's phones to the next, in Bluetooth distance, until it is where it's supposed to go.

Smoker's eyes stay on Portgas. Kid always had balls, but now it's not out of a sense of, 'fuck you all,' but more an, 'I know what I'm worth.'

He stands in front of them, laid back, smile on his face, and Smoker believes it. Portgas was a fucked up kind of kid, and Smoker swore off caring about fucked up kind of kids because they end up dead way too often. Still. He had cared about this one. Not a lot and never out loud, especially not to him.

Over the years Portgas lived with the Whitebeard family, they had many intimate moments. All a different level of fucked up and all horribly memorable. Especially the last one. An unspoken secret between Portgas and him, its traces still hidden on his body. He wonders who knows in this room. Probably just Garp and those sharp-witted enough. Izou most likely. Marco?

Marco's face is blank as it is always blank. What Portgas sees in him, Smoker never understood.

Portgas takes his time to look at all of them. His voice is confident and loud. "Good morning, friends - and cops. To those I haven't seen yet: Surprise I'm back, you are looking great, how are the kids? Good. So. We have a problem. Doflamingo Donquixote allied with Blackbeard, and - basically, we are fucked. Blackbeard has about four hundred people left that we know about. Might be more, might be less if they fled thinking he would go down. Flamingo-dude has a thousand six hundred. Sooo they top us by one thousand. If we don't count the police in."

Smoker gets up. Better him, than Akainu who is busy trying to initiate a staring contest with Whitebeard.

"If Deuce tells the truth-"

"Which he does," Portgas interrupts him.

"If Deuce tells the truth, the situation changes drastically. Doflamingo Donquixote is a dangerous man. A lot of men-power, even more influence. We ask for backup now, for a war we are trying to not have, no one will answer. Orders from above. We need proof that Doflamingo is really here and ready to fight. More than just Deuce's words. Still be best to not fight, for obvious reasons."

"So, we are definitely underpowered without the fucking cops, and we need to prove that it's the Flamingo to get them. No one wants them here anyways - sorry, Smokey -so ideally we manage to trick Doflamingo in some way," Portgas finishes.

Izou steps up. His face is harder than the last time Smoker saw him. But that was years ago.

"I thought about it. We can still bring down the gasoline scheme. This way Blackbeard loses an important source of income. If he promised Doflamingo some kind of wealth for his help, this will hurt even more. My next point is rather simple: Doflamingo is here now because he thinks he can fight Pops. We need allies. Lots of allies."

"Anyone here has any?" Portgas asks, and looks from left to right as if he waits for a hidden army to jump up from behind the sofa.

"We already have all representatives of the Whitebeard allegiance here," Doma says. At least Smoker thinks that's Doma.

"I know it sucks, but if we have the cops circle around here to at least give off the illusion? Let Blackbeard spy on us and let them guess the numbers of cops we have on our side," the tiny Gremlin Whitebeard Commander says.

Portgas nods and turns to his father. "Pops?"

"As a temporary solution, I can accept this."

Smoker nods at him. He wants to patrol this area anyway. Moby Street is not as safe as the Whitebeard family would like to believe.

"Good. We need to talk about weapons and supplies. Ours and theirs, and from where they get them and if we could do something about that," Portgas continues. "I never found out anything about Blackbeard's weapon deals and his supplier."

"Could be Doflamingo," Marco says. "We know he has a factory and that it's his main income sou-"

"Where do you get your weapons from?" Akainu interrupts. His voice is gruff and his face cold. Smoker doesn't like being associated with him. Their understandings of justice differ.

"There was an attempt, buddy. But we all share more than two brain cells," Atmos laughs. "That has nothing to concern you. Put your nose somewhere else."

"What do we know about Doflamingo's weapon factory?" Portgas asks Izou.

"It is located somewhere in Dressrosa."

"What is dress rosa?"

"Dressrosa is his territory, in a city in Mexico."

"What stops us from going there and burning that thing to the ground? You would have brought it up if you would have thought it possible," Portgas says.

"Nothing enters Dressrosa without Doflamingo knowing. You can forget that if you aren't a made member of the Donquixote Mafia."

"So they are most assailable when they leave Dressrosa to ship their weapons and drugs out. What do we know about that?"

"Nothing," Izou sighs.

"We need a scouting team. We want to know where they are delivering to and in what way," Whitebeard orders.

"I'm up for it," the Gremlin says.

"Commando goes to Haruta. Everyone who wants on that team: Go talk to her," Whitebeard declares.

"Ace," Garp addresses him loudly, over the voices of the building team around Haruta. "This is all fine and dandy, but you are losing focus here. We do not want a war with Doflamingo. We are in this to bring down the Blackbeard Mafia. What we really need is Blackbeard's location."

"Dear grandfather, I don't know if you realized, but that is the information I searched for for six years and didn't get."

"Doflamingo will know."

"Yeah, we can't exactly go and ask him now, can we? There is nothing we can give him. All he wants is Pop's head and territory."

The three cops in the room lock eyes. Smoker is sure that they think the same. But Smoker doesn't like it one bit. "We need Whitebeard as a protector of this city," Smoker says to Akainu. "He can't surrender."

The Whitebeard siblings have the audacity to laugh.

"Pops won't surrender. Forget that line of thought right now," Portgas says, grinning. He fits in seamlessly with them. Even after all this time.

"Anyone else has a plan on how to make Doflamingo talk?" He asks into the room. When no one speaks up, he continues.

"Blackbeard will arrive here in a few days if he sticks to the plan we discovered on Lafitte's laptop. We need information on his people here. He can't move like a shadow in our territory. We find him, we win. He dies, Doflamingo will back down. That's all."

"Ace?" Luffy asks, from his place next to his friend Zoro. "What about you? Will this Flamingo-dude target you?"

Portgas looks like he would rather not talk about that. "He might. But I won't back down! If he tries to get closer to me, that also means I get closer to him, right?"

"We should think about an armed escort for you," Smoker says.

"No, thank you. I can take care of myself."

When did he learn how to be polite? The fucked up kid version of him would have insulted Smoker to a point even a man of Smoker's caliber would have turned red.

Marco doesn't seem happy. He is standing in the background, his face still bland, but his arms are crossed in front of his chest. Must be hard. To think about the possibility of someone else he loves, or loved, dying. Well, he made his bed, now he has to sleep in it. Mob life and death are tight friends.

"I think that's it for now? Or does anyone else have anything?" Izou asks.

"Yes," Luffy says and smiles up at him. "We need a name for this operation. Something cool."

"Black Flamingo?" Portgas asks with a shrug.

"Pinkbeard," Marco says and earns chuckles from a lot of them.

Portgas grins his shit-eating grin into their round. "You all okay with that? Then welcome to Operation Pinkbeard, everybody."

The discussions die down, people leave. Portgas still stands in the middle of the room, talking to different people with a smile on his face. Who would have ever thought he would grow up to be this positive and self-assured a man.

"Brat," Smoker calls him over. "I need to speak to you in private."

Portgas looks at him with a tiny questioning frown but directs for Smoker to follow him. He leads him out of the house into the garden.

"Wait. No phones, nothing to track you on you?" Smoker asks. Portgas rolls his eyes lightly. There he is - the brat he knows.

"I'm no beginner," he states.

They sit down on a swing, under a tree, and Smoker briefly wonders if Portgas isn't cold in just his jumper, but then he remembers that this is Portgas. Smoker saw him plow through snowdrifts as tall as his brother, in shorts once.

"You know I don't have secrets from my family, right? What could you possibly want to tell me and only me?"

That's not true, and they both know it. Some secrets he has to carry around with himself. And Smoker helped placing that weight.

He stays quiet for a second. Lets the silence set the mood. This is serious. "I have information for you that so far only me and three people from my team know. Who I trust completely. What you do with it is up to you."

"Why?"

"Because I don't know what it means yet. Up to you to decide if you think it will change anything."

Portgas frowns at him."Okay? Hit me with it."

"When you were imprisoned in Wales, we got the message with your coordinates over Bridegfy. Right?"

Portgas nods.

"We got you guys out, and that was it. Deuce's phone was programmed to send the message out in intervals. It found someone's phone with Bridgefy, and the message traveled to us slowly. It's untraceable, so we couldn't follow back from whom the message got to us."

"Right, but why trace that back? I mean, it was just random people's phones, right?" Portgas asks, frowning more intensely.

"Maybe not."

"What are you saying?"

"When we found you, in Wales, we went through the place. We confiscated everything, but your phones weren't found."

"That's what you told me, yes."

"They _were_ found. Some of the debris we discovered in their tech-room. There were some smashed parts of a phone. We didn't think much of it. We just thought that some things got broken in the fight when we got you out."

"This phone came back from our tech team yesterday," he says and takes it out of his pocket. Its corners are scorched, the display broken. It can't be used without a computer. That the circuit board survived was pure luck.

"They managed to revive some of its data. This phone was Deuce's."

"Then it got broken in the fight. And?"

"The last message and the last coordinates that this phone sent off were from the thirteenth of August, Sussex."

"That's when they got a hold of us," Portgas says, and now the frown on his face is so deep his brows are almost touching. "But how...?"

"The phone was smashed right then and there. It never sent out a message. It never located you in Wales."

Portgas' gaze fixates on Smoker. His freckles stand out more and more on his paling face.

"Then who got our coordinates and made sure they ended up at the police station?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me tell you that I have no idea how phones work, and if this kind of data could be recovered with an intact circuit board is a mystery to me. Let's say in this universe it functions like that
> 
> Thank you all for the wonderful, wonderful comments and kudos I got for the last chapter. I hope you also like this one, and that you all are doing well!


	31. The fallen we get to keep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Animal abuse, but don't worry, it's not explicit and the situation turns out fine in the end

Ace doesn't know what to do with Smoker's information. Their mobiles were destroyed. They never send out a message. What it means is simple: Someone else knew where Ace and Deuce were. That they needed help. And this person knew how to get it for them. Who they needed to contact. Someone had to know how Deuce's phone was programmed. Also: whoever it was, they have to be on their side. They made sure Ace and Deuce were saved. This means they have an ally! And who could have known where they were but someone high up in Blackbeard's ranks? This changes things. It has to! They just need to get to that person and find out what they know. And how. If they know where Blackbeard is. This way, they can stop the whole war. Why didn't Smoker tell this to all of them? True - Ace's conclusions might be far-fetched, and he'd get everyone's hopes up if they were wrong, but shouldn't they concentrate on this?

He needs to talk to Marco about this. Or Luffy. And definitely Deuce.

Smoker left and, naturally, Ace strolled towards the cherry tree. He wants to sit down, on the bank next to it, but it's occupied. "I wondered when you would grace me with your presence. How have you been?"

Kotatsu gives him the mighty glare of a sphinx. Ace wonders if she even remembers him.

He pets her behind the ears, and she leans against his hand willingly. When Ace sits down next to her, she stays with him, so he takes that as confirmation that she does indeed know who he is. Or she just wants to cuddle for some warmth. Like when they first got her. It makes him smile to think about that day.

Mid-autumn. That was in the coldest autumn that they ever had. Marco had suffered with it. He clung to summer.

Over the summer, the Whitebeard family had eaten dinner outside together in the garden. Now they were divided into their respective division houses. They sat without Haruta and Atmos having food fights, and without Fossa laughing about Luffy's antics. Marco frowned at earlier darkening skies as if he could drag summer back with his mind if he did it enough.

Ace made a point out of continuing as much of their summer routines as possible. They couldn't have barbecues at the lake, they couldn't go camping, but they could still take long walks with Stefan through the places they had spent their time in.

Luffy, of course, was overjoyed with autumn. He dragged Marco, Ace, Thatch, Pops, and on one remarkable occasion even Blamenco, out to open fields for kite flying.

Maybe it was those cold, windy hours, maybe it was the germs that Marco, with his doctor duties, surrounded himself with on a daily basis, either way, Marco got a nasty cold. Ace had been to too many parties in that week. He hadn't slept enough, his narcolepsy got worse, and he felt exhaustion creep in. How bad it actually was, he only realized when he didn't even hear his alarm one morning. He was half aware of Marco, with his running nose, constant headache, and cough, getting up to make sure Luffy got to school on time.

Ace slept until late evening.

He came back to awareness, quite suddenly, when the door to Marco's room was opened with too much force. Ace sat up, confused at first and then alarmed.

"Marco? What the-"

"Don't!" Marco said.

Ace stopped in his motion of leaving the bed to get to him.

Marco leaned against the door, shaking. Dripping. "Do not get up. I'm gonna take a shower until roughly April, and then when I can feel my toes again, I would really like to get into an already warmed bed."

"What happened?" Ace asked in loud concern.

Marco's teeth were chattering. His wet coat hung around him looking like a sad, clammy, and deeply frowning potato sack. He had his arms around himself and both quivering hands pressed onto his chest.

"I have an early Christmas present for you," he announced.

"Pneumonia? Nice, just what I asked for."

"No can do. At least I hope. You'll have to do with this."

Marco got closer to the bed. Ace made a face and edged away from where he was leaving icy water drops on the mattress. But he had also gotten curious. Marco opened up his wet, sad, coat and a tiny sound left his hands, closed around something on his chest.

Ace's breath hitched.

Big, yellow eyes stared at him from between Marco's fingers, and then a tiny, damp kitten was spilled onto Ace's lap. Ace made a sound that sounded like it should have come out of the cat's mouth. "Hey, little buddy - Who are you?" The cat meowed up at him meekly. Its dark fur was tousled, and it shivered. Ace looked up at Marco, questioning. "I like this better than you getting pneumonia. Thank you. But why do I get a wet cat?"

"If you cross pneumonia from the wish list, I'm gonna tell you after a shower, okay?"

Marco came back, half an hour later, to the cat purring on Ace's chest. Ace stroked her now dry fur carefully.

"I have great news," Marco said. "This is my bed which means no one can protest when I join this cuddle pile."

"Why would I - GOD DAMN HOLY MOLY LIVING INCARNATION OF A DEFORMED STRING WORM DIPPED IN COLOSTOMY BAG CRUST- are these your toes?? Did you shower in Akainu's intentions or why they feel like concentrated north-pole?"

"That didn't even remotely make sense, and I couldn't shower really hot. It hurt too much, and my toes felt like I was sprinkling soda onto them. Only that the bubbles were needles."

Ace snorted and sat up. "Give me the chalk Luffy left on the nightstand after his experiment yesterday, please."

Marco took only a second to be confused about the change of topic. With a frown, he sorted his knives, Ace's weed supplies, until he found the chalk in the ashtray. "I haven't looked out for it yet, but will I find the result of said experiment?" Marco asked and handed the chalk over.

"Most likely."

"I will hate it?"

"Yep," Ace said and gently placed the cat onto Marco. She protested with a whine, but Ace was already moving.

"No. Please do not leave this bed. We had a deal."

Ace just chuckled, pushed the blanket off of Marco's ice cube feet, and held them down.

"What are you doing?"

Ace giggled, "chalk lining the place where your toes will have died by tomorrow."

"Why are you like this?" Marco sobbed, and the tiny kitten on his chest joined in.

"Don't worry, Kotatsu. When he dies you can feast on his body."

"Kotatsu?"

"Yes, unless she already has a name?"

"Kotatsu is Japanese for small table. Maybe I'm not that imaginative, but I really can't see the resemblance."

"I just thought it sounds neat," Ace said with a shrug. "Can you explain now why I get a wet cat?"

"Accept my cold feet as a bargain for the story!"

Ace scoffed. "Cutthroat. Sure, just give me one sec- GOD FUCKING DAMN IT, MARCO!"

"So," Marco said conversationally over Ace's stream of insults. "You know the northbridge? The one to the direction of Luffy's school and the hospital?"

"Yes?"

"I was walking Stefan down there. I heard a really loud noise from the bridge, looked up, and a car had broken through the protection crash barrier. I saw someone getting out of the car, throw a bag into the water and drive off. Stefan was going nuts, and I had a bad feeling. So. I jumped into the river."

"Wait. You see someone throw their maybe bag of dog shit into a river, and you jump in? When you already have a cold, and it's about 'freeze your ass off' degrees?"

"I don't know," Marco moaned. "I think it was the way the car drove off. Like someone getting away from a crime scene. I thought 'let's risk it. if it's dog shit, Stefan is the only witness to my idiocy. If it's a million-dollar, I can fly to a nice health resort in Switzerland and cure my pneumonia there."

"But it wasn't a million dollars."

"No. It was a wet cat. In a bag."

Ace had already thought that that was where the story was going, but he still felt horrified. "Jesus fuck, who does that? Or are you just that horrible at being a cat?" He gently asked Kotatsu, who was curled in a tight circle right between them. She just leaned onto Ace's arm heavier and started purring. "But props to you. That you got to her while she was still alive. You must have swum like hell."

"More I dived like trying to reach hell. Or Atlantis. I couldn’t see a thing and blindly grabbed for some plastic bag that I felt movement in. Thank God he threw so close to shore."

"Sounds like the beginning of a Stephen King book," Ace said and stroked Kotatsu lovingly. "Do I really get to keep her?"

"If you want to."

"I want to keep everything that fell."

Marco didn't answer. Just wrapped his cold calves around Ace's legs.

Ace fell asleep, thinking about a red cliff and the fallen he hadn't gotten to keep.

* * *

Kotatsu snuggles up to him in the way she did when Ace first got her. She isn't really a house cat, and sometimes they didn't see her for days. But in the coldest winter nights, she used to sneak up into Marco's bed and purr herself asleep on Ace's chest. Ace misses that coziness. Maybe this winter he can get Kotatsu back in his bed. Marco though...

Ace sighs and tries to stir his thoughts back to their smashed phones. The Marco situation is as urgent as Blackbeard, but there isn't a fast solution for it. Is trying to kill a man easier than saving one?

"Ace?"

Ace had been watching Haruta get closer through the garden, but it didn't really register in his mind until right now. The way she says his name makes him think that it wasn't the first time she said it.

"Yes?"

"Food is almost ready. I was looking for you and thought you might have fallen asleep here. Or in the pond."

"That happened exactly once! You all need to stop holding that against me," Ace says fake offended, but he can't hide his smile.

Haruta sits down next to him. Kotatsu gives her a disdainful glare and hops off the bank.

"Bastard. I feed you, you know."

Ace laughs. "She never liked you."

"She doesn't like anyone. Only people whose body temperature is so high they can't be further than second cousins in relation to Satan. Like you."

Ace laughs because he is supposed to. But he doesn't like being compared to the devil anymore. He did that enough in his head when he was a teenager. "Sooo. Scouting team?" He asks.

"Won't be easy. We can't get into Dressrosa, so we have no clue how he ships his stuff."

"Where will you even start? I mean, we can't smuggle someone onto every kind of vehicle that leaves Flamingo HQ."

"Izou had a good idea. If Blackbeard and Doflamingo indeed have a weapon deal, then it would make sense to ship them to gas stations that are in on the gasoline scheme, right? That way armament can easily be spread and arrive at different bases of the Blackbeard Mafia."

Ace thinks aloud. "Blackbeard knows it is me who was trying to track him down. He knows I was working under Laffitte in the Corporation that faked the Licences. So he knows that I know about the gasoline scheme: He might have already stopped all illegal activities around them. He expects us to bring the gasoline scheme down. That means cops in every single gas station. I don't think this will work."

"What you are saying is that he really needs weapons and that this is his last chance to get them before this opportunity closes," Haruta argues.

"We don't know if he is that desperate."

"Well, we are gonna find out."

"This mission has a lot of what-ifs. What if he needs weapons desperately. What if his supplier is Doflamingo. What if they combined that with the gasoline scheme. And what if the gasoline scheme is already out of order."

"Can you maybe lighten up a little? It's not like we have a better plan."

Don't they?

Track the person who got them out of their lockup. Get Blackbeard's location. Avenge Thatch and six lost years of Ace's life. He shrugs. The wish for cigarettes is slowly becoming routine again. He won't smoke next to Haruta though; he can already imagine her unimpressed face.

"Hey, Ace?" Haruta asks. Her voice is unsure. So this will be about emotions. "You know I love you and shit, right? Like - I love having you here, you are one of my best friends, and I missed you terribly..."

"But?" Ace prompts because she wouldn't have said it out loud if she didn't have a 'but' on her mind.

"But I will be the one who will tell you to get the fuck out of here if I think Marco is going too crazy. If because of you, or what happened, or this war - I don't care. He isn't really... stable right now, and I don't want him to do _something_ with you that he would regret later."

"Something?" Ace asks for her to confirm his suspicion.

"Get back together with you. Sleep with you. I don't fucking know, just - Ace! Do not use this vulnerable state he is in. And if you do, don't think it will last. Because I'm not sure Marco knows what he is and isn't doing at the moment."

"You don't want us to get hurt by each other?"

"Yes. I mean - no. Yes."

"Say it."

She bites her lip for a second. Her eyes are apologetic but determined.

"You leaving him broke Marco. Back then, I didn't think he'd recover. Then he met Ilma, and he was slowly healing. And now everything is in shambles, again! This feels like when you left him, and I never wanted to see him in that way, again. He isn't talking about this with any of us. He keeps fleeing, and now on top of that, his first reason for a broken heart comes back, with a fucking war up his sleeve. So you better be good for him, okay? Make this better, and if you can only make it better by not being here, then - I'm sorry - but do that!"

Ace nods. He gets it. Haruta is protective of Marco. She saw how he handled their breakup, she doesn't know what it did to Ace. "He talked to me. For a bit. Said that my opinion is the last one that matters to him, so he can tell me. Thanks for looking out for him, but I think, at the moment, I have some benefits for Marco."

She nods and looks away from Ace to hide her tears. "Must have sucked to hear that. I'd say I'm sorry that he was such a bastard to you, but you deserved it." She turns back to Ace. A few tears have fallen, and her lips are pressed tightly onto one another. She slaps Ace's leg, not too gently. "Motherfucker. Really. Fuck you. I love you, but fuck you!"

Ace slings his arm around her shoulder. "I'm sorry that I left. In that night, in that way. It's not only Marco that I hurt. I know that."

"It hurt worse that _you_ hurt him. You of all people! He never even told us what happened, or why."

That's because he doesn't know. Or at least suspects he doesn't.

That's good. That means Ace still has a chance to make things right. Hopefully.

"I had many reasons."

"And you didn't love us enough to just...not go. Like that?" Her tears are dripping onto Ace's hand on her cheek.

"You know I love you all, more than anything. That hasn't changed," Ace assures her.

"Marco, too?"

"How could I ever not love Marco?"

"Who knows, you are one dumb motherfucker."

"That's fair. Feels like my last two brain cells are so far apart, they are in a long-distance relationship."

She laughs and finally returns Ace's hug. "I love you so much, Idiot. Please be good enough for Marco to stay here. We all can't lose you a second time."

"I promise I will try my hardest. I promise."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MAAAAN these last two weeks felt like they were dragging on forever, for me. I'm so happy about having something to post again! Hope you like it and thank you all for the wonderful comments and kudos I got for the last chaptes!


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